Perfect Moment Monday: sweet surrender

Perfect Moment Monday is more about noticing a perfect moment than about creating one. Perfect moments are just waiting to be observed, and can be momentous or ordinary or somewhere in between.

We gather here once a week to engage in mindfulness about something that is right with our world, if only for a, well, a moment. Everyone is welcome to join. Details on how to participate are at the bottom of this post, complete with bloggy bling.

Now, here's mine.

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I'm well aware of my shortcomings as a mom. I lack enough patience. I don't engage deeply and often enough with my kids. I have an overwhelming need to have time and space away from them. I am not Fun Mom simply because of my aversion to activities for which there will be more than 90 seconds of cleanup.

I am also aware of my strengths. I have healthy boundaries with them. I respect myself and expect that they treat me (and others) respectfully. I model for them how to love one's body and treat it well. I model lifelong learning and inquisitiveness.

I added something new this week: the ability to sit with pain and discomfort without fixing it.* Which, not surprisingly, mended the situation.

Reed is surrounded by alpha people. The other three members of his household are all very bossy eldest children, and his best friend is a hellion spirited child. Reed is incredibly resilient, and has a wide range in which to accommodate the whims and demands of others.

One day last week, he'd had a particularly pushed-around day. He got blamed by his kindergarten teacher for something another kid did. His best friend wouldn't give back Reed's Star Wars game, and later when Tessa got home, she kept interrupting him as he tried to tell me his troubles. He grew increasingly whiny and pouty.

Rather than my usual reaction to whining, which is to send him to his room until he can be pleasant again, I simply picked him up and carried him gently to another room and told him, "It sounds like you've had a hard day. Sometimes it's hard to share, isn't it?"

His little body collapsed into mine and he sobbed into my shoulder, more relieved to be understood than sad about the day. Tessa came to get in on the action, and I gently asked her to wait for me in the kitchen (and she complied!).

Reed got the message that he deserved 100% of something once in awhile.

Then it was over. And his surrender was a perfect moment for me.

*I was grateful that I'd recently read this post by Melissa that predisposed me to an empathic approach.

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Be sure to follow the other stories/links because as we know, perfect moments can be found in giving and receiving comments. So how about you deliver a couple of Perfect Moment seeds and trust that they'll grow?

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I Capture
Perfect Moments.

Now. What Perfect Moment have you recently been aware of?

Read about these perfect moments had by these people. Get to know someone new today: