Worry

I had one of those days yesterday when I felt completely out of sorts. My tolerance levels were really really low and I felt really tired and irritable, and that I had a mountain of things to do and was not achieving any of them. At one point it started raining and I had to get some stuff inside that was drying, my eldest was lying on the hall floor asking for honey on bread, my youngest was busy flooding the kitchen floor sorry washing up, I needed the loo, the phone started ringing and there was a knock on the door. I felt like a rabbit stuck in the car headlights.

After I had sorted everything out by flinging the now wet things inside, ignoring the phone, answering the door, sorting the snack and wiping the floor, I headed to the loo. I always find this a good place to ponder (even though I am never alone) and decided I just needed to do less today, it was not going to be a day that I could do loads of chores/stuff around the house.

So I headed for the sofa and started knitting, I talked to the children, I read them books, I played with farm animals and vehicles and enjoyed the rest of the day. Later in the day when I had a bit of time to think, I thought about what on earth could have made me feel so out of sorts, it hit me like train at ninety miles an hour. My dad had been into hospital for an operation at really short notice, I was worried he would be alright. I rang him straight away to check, whilst I was waiting for him or mum to answer I was filled with a huge surge of emotion, it welled up inside me until he answered. My first words to him were, thank god you're alright. He went very quiet, and then said, were you worried, I've just realised I was I replied and we carried on talking.

It took me all day to realise what was making me feel out of sorts, cross, tetchy, short fused is it any wonder that sometimes our children feel the same and simply cannot explain why?

Change

When we experience change in our life, if we have no control over it, it can be very unsettling.  In my last job during the final year of working there the culture of the organisation was changing in a direction that was not one that I could reconcile with.  I found this so unsettling and started to look around, unsuccessfully, for another job (I then got pregnant so the dilemma was solved for me).   It saddened me that when I finally left a job that I had so enjoyed, I was glad to walk away.

As adults if we make changes in our lives, such as moving house, we have control, we know that they are going to happen and can prepare ourselves.

Our children rarely have control over change.  It is more often than not imposed on them.  Many a time I have heard parents say 'children can cope with anything, they'll be alright' if they are about to put their children through a major change in their lives.  Yes they probably will be alright, but only if they receive the support that they need to help them to make sense of it.  If we are not there to listen to them and see their behaviour as challenging, wearing and inflexible we are setting ourselves up to be challenged and worn down by our own inflexibility.  Our own inflexibility?  Yes, to being able to see that there is another way of looking at the change, through the eyes of our child, which will be totally different to our own way of looking at it.   We all need time to absorb and make peace with changes, we all need to be able to do this at our own pace.