When the dog bites…

Poor old Julie Andrews. She had to play a singing nanny AND a singing nun.

Its amazing her sex life ever got off the ground. She did have a point though.

There ARE days where the dog bites (or worse, your dog bites someone else!), you get a speeding ticket and a court summons and your child breaks out in measles.

What is most important for Mothers to do on days like this?

Well, besides showing some compassion to yourself, the most important thing is not to panic.

Why?

Because, besides making you feel awful, panicking marinates your child in fear.

I am not always the best cook. I experiment too liberally. The other day I decided to make spicy Thai Beef and added extra vinegar.

Result? The marinade was too vinegary. My solution? Add more vegetables. Result? Large pot of vinegary vegetables with small pieces of beef floating on top.  Lesson? Be careful with the marinade.

Children absorb the emotional atmosphere like sponges.

The home environment is like the marinade…it is an emotional soup that our kids are formed within.

This soup affects their daily behavior and their long term responses to life.

It is the ATMOSPHERE of home that kids absorb, more than words.

Just like the pieces of beef in my marinade they soak up whatever they are placed into.

Fear pickles them so they become scratchy, irritable and fearful.

Here are three simple things Mothers can do to keep the atmosphere good when  facing a bunch of stresses:

1. Take care of yourself.

Be kind to yourself when tough stuff happens. Don’t push yourself. Don’t make yourself clean the oven or mow the yard or get angry at yourself.  Cut yourself some slack. Be gentle with yourself when bad things are happening. You are having a bad day.

2. Believe that things are working out. Bad days and Life glitches are a part of life. They don’t mean we are on the highway to hell.

The harder a life you have been given, the more glitches you face, the more regularly.  If  you face these with a sense of okness and the knowledge that, OVERALL, things are working out, you can relax as the glitches become fewer and further between.

Anyone who is reading this and trying to make their life better can have this confidence.

Life only gets worse when we don’t pay attention.

If you have a bed full of bedbugs each bucket you find is one less bucket in your bed!  The bucketful means one lot is on its way out, NOT that you are destined to have bedbugs forever!

Believe that overall things ARE working out.

This will soothe you because it is true.

3. Let yourself feel as happy as you would if things WERE working out.

This may sound crazy but half of the stress of bad things happening is how bad we feel: frightened, shame filled, distressed, hopeless etc.

If you let yourself FEEL okay even when things aren’t perfect you cut the suffering by 75%.

If the dog bite can’t give you nightmares for 3 nights then it is just a dogbite: Painful and unpleasant but it will heal. If you listen to an 8 year old tell the story of a dogbite you realize it can also be an adventure! It will pass.

The bad day passes and the marinade is still healthy.

These three things are the best things because they empower you to marinate yourself AND your kids in kindness and gentleness instead of panic, pain and grief.

Result?

Once the bad things pass (and they always do) YOU aren’t drained and you then don’t have stressed-out, hyped-up kids to deal with.

You just pick up the pieces and carry on.

So…

No matter what happens choose a gentle marinade for yourself. Everything else will be okay.

With care,

The vinegar cook.

Photocredits (in order): c. Depositphotos/Kikkerdirk; animagistra; vesnac; silvestrova; beerkoff1.