After last night

It’s been like almost a week. Nights have been getting better. And mornings have been amazing. It’s so wild. Last week she screamed and cried at drop off at daycare. This week she yelled “yay school” when we pulled into the parking lot. She has been doing much better at drop off. Nights are still wishy washy, I feel they always will be.

Raising a kid is such a roller coaster. Never ending spurt, stages, phases, and growing.

And ever since then bedtime has been getting better and mornings are wonderful. Growth spurts and developmental spurts are a doozy. After bad nights I always feel bad, but I keep reminding myself that it’s ok. It will all pass, it’s just a phase. It really is just a phase. It always passes.

What we need to do is remind ourselves that growing is hard too. Growing can hurt, growing is confusing, and growing is just hard. They’re little. They don’t understand that they are growing and that everything is ok. They get anxious and scared when everything starts changing. They just need to be guided and comforted through growing.

We need to talk to them and teach them. Not yell or distract them. And that is really hard. Having the patience to always teach rather than “stop screaming in my ear” or “hurry we gotta go go go.” Sometimes you can’t teach. Sometimes you don’t have time or patience to teach. That’s ok. It’s ok to have those days.

I don’t always have the patience and I am hard on myself about that. I’m trying to be more gentle with myself. I don’t have a lot of those days. They come and go. But overall we have good, patient days. It’s ok if you have bad days. It really is. I know society and other people will try to make it seem that it is not ok to have a bad day, but we’re human. We’re going to have bad days and that’s ok.

They have bad days, we have bad days, and they need to know that is ok. Just apologize and keep going. Teach them grace. Teach them forgiveness. Teach them that being human is ok, as humans we are always growing and learning and that comes with its own obstacles and growing pains and we need to let others have the space to grow and know it’s ok to grow.

We’ve watched Gabby’s Doll House about 17 million times and my kiddo’s favorite thing to sing from the show is “oopsie, oopsie, oopsie, I made a mistake and that’s ok.” Every time she sings it it reminds me that it is ok to have a bad day, it is ok to make a mistake. No one is perfect and you need to relax. So take a deep breath and go play with your kiddo.