Nailed It
Sometimes I startle myself with my meanness. No, really. Just today at the lunch table, Eden was fussing (are you surprised?), Noah was bossing, and Seth was making weird sound effects and clanging a spoon on the table at the same time.
"ENOUGH!" I yelled. "I. Can't. Handle. Any. More!!"
'Cause that's just the sweetheart I am. I begin to think my problem lies when the noisiness of my children clashes with my craving for silence. And maybe it does to some extent, but I think truly when this happens, there's some soul noise of my own that needs to be dealt with. Fast forward an hour later when Noah is occupied with Grammy over his Math lesson, and Eden and Seth are down for a rest. Now it is quiet, and I have a minute to finish my chapter in the book I have been reading, Loving the Little Years. Imagine my shock when I came across this passage that seems like the author was reading my mind:
"You feel like the only thing you do all day every day is tell the kids to stop. Stop fussing, stop touching, stop fighting, stop asking, stop being awake, and anything else you can think of that you would like for them to stop. Are you having to circle almost every problem on every student's test every day? Are you starting to write the grade on the top of the page a little bigger and with a stern face? Are you going to try to drum up some of those Mr. Poison stickers to start putting on papers?
When this happens, a summary for the day might be something like this: Child number one was a huge pill all day. Child number two was crying and fussing and fighting with child number one. Children three and four were just as bad, but I don't know what they were doing, but everyone was terrible, terrible, terrible. Nothing was good all day. Twelve percent for everyone. An F minus for the whole class. We failed, we flunked, bombed out, and were ugly, ugly, ugly today.
Imagine you give a report like this to your husband at the end of the day while collapsed on the couch making tired faces. Then imagine that he asks in his unhelpful way if you were spanking for it. (Don't pretend you haven't had a conversation like this some time--I know all about it!) Usually the answer would be not really, or very little. Because when you come right down to it, you know exactly who needs to be spanked, and it is you. Because if you are the teacher and none of the students are succeeding, you need to be doing a better job. You need to think of a new way to explain the lessons...
Setting behaviors into stories is a great way to communicate with your little people. Got a boy hitting his sister? Tell him about a brave knight who went out to fight the dragon but started hitting the princess instead. Give the children a chance to get outside themselves and see their behavior as it plays out in a story. It often turns out they know exactly the right thing to do." (p.25-26 Loving the Little Years, by Rachel Jankovic)
She nailed it. "Because when you come right down to it, you know exactly who needs to be spanked, and it is you."
Remember this, Jo!
"ENOUGH!" I yelled. "I. Can't. Handle. Any. More!!"
'Cause that's just the sweetheart I am. I begin to think my problem lies when the noisiness of my children clashes with my craving for silence. And maybe it does to some extent, but I think truly when this happens, there's some soul noise of my own that needs to be dealt with. Fast forward an hour later when Noah is occupied with Grammy over his Math lesson, and Eden and Seth are down for a rest. Now it is quiet, and I have a minute to finish my chapter in the book I have been reading, Loving the Little Years. Imagine my shock when I came across this passage that seems like the author was reading my mind:
"You feel like the only thing you do all day every day is tell the kids to stop. Stop fussing, stop touching, stop fighting, stop asking, stop being awake, and anything else you can think of that you would like for them to stop. Are you having to circle almost every problem on every student's test every day? Are you starting to write the grade on the top of the page a little bigger and with a stern face? Are you going to try to drum up some of those Mr. Poison stickers to start putting on papers?
When this happens, a summary for the day might be something like this: Child number one was a huge pill all day. Child number two was crying and fussing and fighting with child number one. Children three and four were just as bad, but I don't know what they were doing, but everyone was terrible, terrible, terrible. Nothing was good all day. Twelve percent for everyone. An F minus for the whole class. We failed, we flunked, bombed out, and were ugly, ugly, ugly today.
Imagine you give a report like this to your husband at the end of the day while collapsed on the couch making tired faces. Then imagine that he asks in his unhelpful way if you were spanking for it. (Don't pretend you haven't had a conversation like this some time--I know all about it!) Usually the answer would be not really, or very little. Because when you come right down to it, you know exactly who needs to be spanked, and it is you. Because if you are the teacher and none of the students are succeeding, you need to be doing a better job. You need to think of a new way to explain the lessons...
Setting behaviors into stories is a great way to communicate with your little people. Got a boy hitting his sister? Tell him about a brave knight who went out to fight the dragon but started hitting the princess instead. Give the children a chance to get outside themselves and see their behavior as it plays out in a story. It often turns out they know exactly the right thing to do." (p.25-26 Loving the Little Years, by Rachel Jankovic)
She nailed it. "Because when you come right down to it, you know exactly who needs to be spanked, and it is you."
Remember this, Jo!
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