Getting ready to leave for a day trip with kids can be one of the most stressful experiences of a mom’s life.
Why? Because kids love to do anything and everything but get ready and walk out the door.
However, when your son decides to performs science experiments on the back deck after you asked him to get his shoes on, you wonder how to keep the energy positive for the day.
We instinctively want to connect with our children, to love and dote on them. After all they are only little once!
This is tough to do when it seems everything is going wrong in a day.
Should we reward them for “bad” behavior?
Dayna, mom of three and author of Lemon Lime Adventures reminds us how it is even more important to connect on the tough days:
“The need to feel part of a warm and loving family is a necessary reminder that we’ll get through it, we’ll get to the “good days” again and we’ll do it all together.”
Not everyday can be one of those perfect family days from the movies where all the dirty clothes make it to the hamper and you only have to ask once for homework to be completed, but that’s life.
As Dayna puts it, our goal is just to “make sure that all of our positive interactions with our kids outweigh the negative ones.”
Letting our children know we love them unconditionally, are available, and willing to hear them out even when we are frustrated or upset is critical to establishing an unbreakable family bond children can depend on.
Connecting with one another on the “good days” is not hard to do.
When the whole family is in a good mood and all the tasks for the day have been completed with no complaining it gives us moms a warm fuzzy feeling that comes out in extra cuddles and giggles with our kids.
After a meltdown when you are sweating from extracting a flailing toddler from the supermarket it is hard to feel the “I love you” moments.
But this is when they need it the most!
Put in the extra effort to connect on the hard days so you can support each other as a family.
Set aside family bonding time a few times each month to build each other up and give the kids something consistent to look forward to.
The hard part is to uphold your end of the deal when it has been a challenging day, with the kids or otherwise.
These are the most important days to let each other know you love and value one another.
It doesn’t have to be a big production. Go for a walk, make cookies together, or play a board game.
Whatever you decide to do, just do it together.
And after every meltdown, fight over going to a friend’s house, or blowup because the kids refuse to hang their jackets in the closet, take a moment and then reconnect with your child.
We are trying our hardest to raise good human beings who care for themselves and others, but we forget one of the best ways of doing that is showing our love for them as our child far outweighs any frustration or disappointment we have.
Little things have a way of becoming big things if they aren’t dealt with right away and put into perspective.
While it is important that children learn to be respectful of the home and us, we don’t want to miss out on those precious moments to bond with our children; because they will be grown before we know it.