My 5-year-old son’s best buddy is his dad. My husband is wonderful to this child who is the fifth of seven children. When my husband is home he plays board games with him, entertains him before dinner, takes him on outings, reads him stories etc . . . . .
Sometimes it’s challenging when my husband deploys because I cannot keep up with the amount of attention this child requires and his behavior problems increase. Recently he has climbed onto the roof outside his window, destroyed his siblings property on purpose, and snuck everyone’s special food they were trying to hide from him, among other things. Maybe you can relate with a child of your own?
The other day when he had acted out time after time, I finally lost it. My emotions said “Send this child to school! I don’t want to deal with him.” I homeschool my children and love it, so this idea is not really what I wanted but, in the moment it felt like changing the circumstances would solve my problem. (Hint: changing circumstances very rarely solves the problem). I also experienced mom guilt that I was not able to provide him with everything he needed to thrive. I was making his bad behavior mean that I was a terrible mother and that he would be better off with someone else for school. I actually went to bed that night with the intention of enrolling him in public school.
The next morning I woke up questioning my resolve to send him to school. I didn’t feel good about it. You see, deep down, I love having my children at home with me and teaching them; I didn’t want to send him to school.
Enter my coach. Everyone needs a coach. I have multiple friends who act in this capacity for me. This specific friend homeschools and understands the thought model, so for the next hour I talked to her and cried. I cried for an hour about my son. I felt my feelings. She stayed on the line and talked me through it.
In the end I realized a lot of things, but I mainly realized that his behavior is not a problem. Circumstances are not problems unless I think they are problems. What are we making our circumstances mean about us? If it’s not a problem do I just let him do whatever he wants? No! It doesn’t mean I don’t give him consequences, it means I found new perspective and I clearly saw that it’s actually pretty normal behavior for a 5-year-old child missing his father to act out. I even remembered how my first daughter at age 5 climbed on the roof outside her room when we lived in Japan. ( It must run in the family).
With a new set of thoughts in hand I was ready to face the day. New thoughts are hard to reach if we don’t feel our feelings. My new thoughts did not come until I had cried it out. Feeling our feelings leaves us unburdened and give us mental clarity.
So feel those feelings first and then change your thoughts. It will make thinking better thoughts so much easier.
