An Insight From My Child

The more I observe my child, the more life lessons I learn.  

My child loves to swim and splash around in water. He goes to weekly lessons and due to the holidays, they were cancelled so we decided to take him swimming on our own.  

In order for us to do this, we had to put him down a little earlier for his nap….he did not like this one bit.  He fought and fought and fought and after an hour, finally fell asleep. Luckily, we were still able to fit swimming in when he woke up.

Now, what did I learn from this?

• Sometimes the universe has good things planned for us (i.e. taking us swimming) but we are so focused on what we don’t want to do in the moment (i.e. take a nap) that we don’t know we are getting what we want later
  
• It is really hard to ‘force’ someone who is determined to do what you want (ie.e take a nap), even if you want to.  Better to go with the bodies’ down rhythms and patterns.
  
• Express your emotions!  When my child does not want to go to bed, he does not hold his emotions in.  He doesn’t try to hide behind a smile or run away and cry when no one is around...he yells, screams and cries.  You know when he is upset. When he’s done expressing his emotions, he calms down and is back to his regular self.  How often have you held in emotions only to have it come out or explode at the wrong time? Learning to express our emotions in the moment will save our body, down the road.
  
• Live in the moment.  Kids don’t live in the future, they live in the now.  They react to the now. There is no faking with a young child, they will express their emotions in the present moment.
  
• Savour the sweet moments.  It was not pleasant having a baby scream when going down for his nap but...when he did calm down, he reached out for my hand and then fell asleep holding my hand.  I could live in that moment forever.
  

What are some life lessons that your children have taught you?  Comment below.

​