We just had one of “those” mornings. You know, the ones where everyone is stressed, in a hurry, and can’t find their things.
It was supposed to be an exciting dress up day at school. Their catholic school was having a fundraiser, and all the students had worked really hard to raise money. They reached their first goal! M&M day! Dress up as anything starting with “m”.
My oldest decided to dress up as a mom. I’m not entirely sure if that was meant to be a compliment or not, but I’ll take it. My second decided to not dress up, and my youngest decided to be a mummy.
We didn’t have a mummy costume and live out of town. Being the planner and do it yourselfer I am, I found some first aid kit bandages to use as mummy wrap. We tried it out the day before. Nothing fancy, but we were able to get his arms, torso and a little part of his head wrapped up and looking pretty good. He was so excited and wanted me to snap a picture!
Fast forward to this morning, time to wrap him up after breakfast. I didn’t realize that while he had taken the wrap off himself the day before, it had gotten all stuck together. (It was the non reusable kind of bandage roll).
The first alarm on my phone had rung, letting us know (and increasing the stress level) that the bus would be here in 5 min.
The other 2 kids each were either having trouble finding a book or getting their shoes on. I told my son in a fairly calm, but stern voice that he should please make sure to ask me for help with taking his costume off so we could roll it up nicely. Now it was going to be hard to put his bandage wraps on the way we had planned because it all stuck together.
I kept repeating that another time and then another to him all the while feeling bad that I had not caught that it was all stuck together the night before. My son’s face drooped and he was very disappointed that his costume wasn’t going to turn out like he had planned.
He said he wanted to take it off but I encouraged him to leave it on and see if his teacher could get a picture and then he could take it off if he wanted.
The bus stopped at the driveway as I gave him a quick hug and said he better get going and I hoped he would have a good day. He trudged slowly down the driveway to the bus, disappointed about how his first dress up day as a kindergartner was a bust.
I felt awful. I know kids are going to have disappointments in life and need to overcome and learn from it. I also know my repeatedly pointing out what he should’ve done differently in that moment didnt help anything.
I went to work and had trouble not thinking about the whole situation. After a while, I realized that me beating myself up for my mistakes trying to correct his mistakes also wasn’t productive.
We are both humans and make mistakes. The best thing I could do was apologize and talk about how we can both do better next time. I also decided to get him excited about making a mummy costume out of old white tshirts ( diy all the way!) for Halloween coming up in a few weeks.
Excited to make amends, I got ready to go pick up the kids from school. I drive up and I see my first and my second but no sign of my youngest son.
My daughter went inside to check if he was still there because she was sure he didn’t ride the bus home.
Sure enough, she came out with her arm around my youngest son crying. As he got up to the car, I asked him what was wrong. He said that people made fun of him because his mummy costume didn’t look good.
I gave him a big hug and apologized for the stressful morning. Then I told him my idea that I thought of while he was gone. His spirits lifted and I felt much better after apologizing.
It’s so easy to get caught up in wanting to teach our kids in the moment. Those high stress situations for the most part aren’t the best time to do that.
Of course we will screw up (welcome to being human)! The main thing is making amends and focusing on positive changes next time.
I don’t want my kids to leave for school starting the day on a bad note. I want to teach them to be respectful, responsible, hardworking, and loving kids.
It’s much easier for them to learn all of these things when they are feeling loved and encouraged by me. Not harped on for making an honest mistake.
So mamas, let’s all do our best to learn from and let go of our honest mistakes. And also be willing to do the same for our kids that are still developing so much.
The thing they need the most from us is our unconditional love. Because we all learn best when we are feeling our best.