When our children are overwhelmed with emotions it is easy to say not to join the chaos and stay calm.
Lately my patience-o-meter is running low.
Today is one such day where I had joined the chaos and out came the words ‘I love going to the park with Amma’.
Momentarily I calmed and thought in a split second what I was doing was wrong.
I was seeing the chaos and not the emotion aka LOVE my elder son was crying for, when my dearest wife left to the park in the building with the younger one. It all happened to avoid a chaos waiting to happen with my younger one rushing in his push along car into the elevator.
I was in the rush to leave for work and the last thing I wanted was a screaming toddler asking his mom to come back home to accompany him to the park.
I sometimes pity my wife that she had to deal with this chaos alone while I am driving to work.
Today’s case in point, she can neither leave the younger one alone in the park nor can she come up with him to accompany the crying toddler.
She had to decide between which noisy kid to attend to first, the one in the park or the one in the 4th floor.
And here I was stuck between a toddler crying for his mom and my work phone waiting to ring, he won’t go down to the park with me or his grandma. I was clearly in no mood to patiently sit and listen, my phone would ring any minute now as I was running late for a meeting (it did ring eventually).
Just when I was losing my cool with my dear son, I thought I will give one last shot.
Made him sit on the bed (still crying…screaming) why won’t you go with grandma? Then he goes, ‘I love going to the park with Amma’.
Wow…what a fool I was thinking he was being irrational for no reason.
Yes he was irrational, but with a reason. The reason was Love.
Clearly I felt small for having judged him, this little boy was full of love.
How lucky is my wife? For, in his head it is their ‘together time’.
That time isn’t in the park, it starts the moment he steps out of the house to go to the park. So the whole trip to the park means a lot to him, it is not about playing alone. It is also about his mom being around him, for him, with him.
My wife walks in to save the day and I tell her what I heard a few minutes back. There was calm.
After a quick exchange of words, she walks hand in hand with him now calm and composed, for ‘their park time’. I reckon this little chaos would make the coming park days more joyful and love filled from the very first step for my wife.
The verdict is loud and clear in his own words ‘I love going to the park with Amma’.
LOVE being the operative word.
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