Kill your OWN panic – your kids will thank you for it

Morning!

Well, yesterday certainly saw quite the excitement in the Ling family indeed!

You see, every evening my kids indulge in either DDR (wrote a great Squidoo page about that HERE) or other calorie-burning activities.  At my family, we (ideally!) never go on diets, instead, we try to hold fast to simply eating smart and exercising well.

Anywhos, it turns out – Honorable Boy II managed to introduce the side of his head to the corner of the wall, and ended up with an extremely bloody scalp wound that, well, bled more than a spilled can of paint.   Fun!

Not!

I was in my office, and the kids called me to see my red-haired/faced/shirted son wailing his head off…and let me tell you, seeing your child covered in blood is not exactly the most calming thing on the face of this planet!  Which was why I went into:

Super Magnificent Mom Mode!

Now, if you’re a mom or dad, you’re probably well-aware of this other-wordly state.  It’s the one that could calmly dissuade Godzilla from chowing down on Tokyo, it would gently freeze a flash flood in the Nile and save countless thousands from drowning, it would prevent solar flares from destroying state-of-the-art radio towers.

In other words, it’s YOU more calm than a Tibetian monk who found himself blessed with endless coffee.

While inside of me, I was debating about the merits of screaming hysterically, the outside of me saw me hugging HB2 to my chest, calling for ice and paper towels and otherwise, defusing all 4 kids from completely panicking like a herd of wildebeest who spied Marlon Perkins approaching bearing a "opportunity" to appear in the show.  With such calmness suffusing the environment….all the kids calmed down, HB2 was able to regroup, I was able to clean off all the blood, and we all went for a cuddle 2 minutes later.

So what’s the moral to this story?

Always, but always…your kids will reflect your energy…positive OR negative.

One panicked kid is enough to handle, but if I had panicked as well, I’d have the utter joy of dealing with 4 times the panic from the other kids too.

So….even if you’re an excitable individuals, save that excitement for when your kids are NOT looking to you for guidance on how to behave.

Your future sanity will thank you for it.

Enjoy,

Barbara Ling