04-30-2010, 11:05 AM
Well we're nearly 3/4ths of the way through our week. How is everyone doing? Here are two of my most standout experiences...
1. When I get home from work I take over the role of parent and to the nighttime routine with the kids. That means bath, teeth brushing, toy-pick up / clean up, diaper change. PJ's, story time and then night-night. Our oldest son is 2 1/2 and for a while now has become less and less cooperative in this process, especially since he's at the end of the day and very tired / cranky and also simply at a state of development where he's learning to refuse things. As a result it's made the night time routine pretty stressful some days, and it would leave me feeling frustrated. My wife reminded me to not simply bark orders but to stop and try and communicate more when he throws up an objection. Well, it worked really well! Not flawlessly, but when he would say "No" I would get down to his level and ask why not. Then I would explain why we needed to brush our teeth, and that if we did, we could have a story. It made a biiig difference. Thinking on this this morning, I realize it was just an exercise of added patience and understanding.
2. I have a friend at work with whom I will some times strike up conversations with on religious, moral or other topics. We have vastly different backgrounds in this area, and so although we are friends our dialogs can become a little bit heated. I anticipated this one with my ideals of patience in mind. Our dialogs this week have been a lot smoother. When I heard him say something that I disagreed with completely, I waited, sometimes minutes before responding. As a result I was able to much more fully express my point of view and in a much more patience and understanding way. (thank god for that!)
1. When I get home from work I take over the role of parent and to the nighttime routine with the kids. That means bath, teeth brushing, toy-pick up / clean up, diaper change. PJ's, story time and then night-night. Our oldest son is 2 1/2 and for a while now has become less and less cooperative in this process, especially since he's at the end of the day and very tired / cranky and also simply at a state of development where he's learning to refuse things. As a result it's made the night time routine pretty stressful some days, and it would leave me feeling frustrated. My wife reminded me to not simply bark orders but to stop and try and communicate more when he throws up an objection. Well, it worked really well! Not flawlessly, but when he would say "No" I would get down to his level and ask why not. Then I would explain why we needed to brush our teeth, and that if we did, we could have a story. It made a biiig difference. Thinking on this this morning, I realize it was just an exercise of added patience and understanding.
2. I have a friend at work with whom I will some times strike up conversations with on religious, moral or other topics. We have vastly different backgrounds in this area, and so although we are friends our dialogs can become a little bit heated. I anticipated this one with my ideals of patience in mind. Our dialogs this week have been a lot smoother. When I heard him say something that I disagreed with completely, I waited, sometimes minutes before responding. As a result I was able to much more fully express my point of view and in a much more patience and understanding way. (thank god for that!)