We’re going to take a small break tonight from the normal
and take a closer look as to what I mean when I say, “be the change”. Be prepared this is a slightly longer post
tonight, but worth a read, trust me.
Every day we each have infinite interactions with other
people – family, friends and strangers. Take
a moment and think about how many people you interacted with today. If I had to guess, it was more than 20. I know for me it was probably over 50 and not
every interaction was positive. I can
admit that freely. What if we made each
interaction positive – in one day, I would have impacted 50 people’s lives for
them to maybe go and impact 50 more.
This positivity and being the change would spread like wildfire. We would start to see more positivity coming
out of this world than what we see now.
We could create a better world for our children/grandchildren and turn
things around, but it must start somewhere.
Let’s take an example from my day and I’ll show you where I
would have tried to “be the change”. I
believe that by sharing with you a part of my life, it’s much more personable
and relatable. Also, this will be a
little PSA on how to react to parents with an upset child, special needs or
not.
My husband and I went out today to do some last-minute
Christmas shopping for each other – nothing expensive, but we hadn’t gotten
each other anything. We had Hayden along
and he was very ornery today. Nothing
seemed to make him happy and it was compounded by his inability to communicate
effectively. As we went through
different stores, he would start screaming loudly each time we stopped. He has been doing this lately at Walmart
(lately I’ve felt like doing that too – see more opportunity to “be the change”),
but nowhere else, so I’m familiar with it.
The thing is the only way to combat it with him is to ignore it. When he starts, I take a step back from the
cart and turn my body slightly, until he calms down. I always state that we don’t communicate that
way and please calmly let me know what he would like. Of course, I make sure we aren’t in the middle
of the aisle or anything. His response,
like any child, is to get louder and start kicking his legs. You can imagine the looks I get as this is
happening. Again, I stress that the only
way to break him of this is to let me know I won’t pay attention and even
though he doesn’t want to do this right now, this is what we are doing. Most times he will calm down and we continue,
until it happens again. It’s a cycle
that we are breaking.
What am I asking from you? Please don’t be one of those
individuals whose head snaps over to where a child is screaming and then give a
disapproving look. Believe me, it’s hard
enough on the parents to try and tackle the situation without the looks. For me, a small smile of encouragement would
mean the world. Even a look of “I’ve
been there before” would suffice. Until
I became a parent, I’m sure on occasion I was one of these individuals, so now
I want to offer some advice to those who are like I use to be. Parenting is hard. It’s one of the hardest things you will ever
do, but it is the most rewarding! Offer that parent with the upset child your
encouragement and not judgement. You
never know what is the underlying issue and you could alleviate an already
tough situation.
We never figured out Hayden’s issue today. I think he was hangry – a very strong trait
from my side of the family. However, he
was offered different things and didn’t want any of them. He may just be tired of sitting or being out.
I’ll never know. Once we were in the
car, listening to Rammstein (his new favorite), he was rockin’ out and
smiling. Children are mysteries a lot of
the time. I’ll never understand 😊
Tonight, I want to ask all of you to do me a favor – go out
as soon as you read this, or the earliest opportunity, and do something good
for someone else. Let’s make “be the
change” a movement. After you’ve done
something, post about it on Facebook, this blog, somewhere what you did with
#bethechange. Right now, we may be a small
group of people, but, as I stated in a previous post, “one grain of rice can
tip the scale”.
BE THE CHANGE!
Always,
Sheri
