My world is dominated by many, many epic battles. I have learned the fine art of changing literally anything into an all-powerful, world-saving weapon. I am a mom of boys. Three, loud, strong, stubborn boys. I love them more than I ever thought I could love dirty little humans who leave a trail of crumbs (also pronounced muddy hand prints) wherever they go. But, alas, my world is dominated by their physicality. They have to always be physically interacting with each other. On a daily basis I say the words, “No kicking to the head”,”Your brother is not a chair” or “Please don’t stand on his face”. Now that I have successfully surrendered all my considerations for mom of the year, let me tell you how I have recently begun to use this physicality to my benefit.
Muscles are the way to their heart. I am very disappointed in myself that it has taken me this long to use this avenue to help them become better humans. Screen time is always a fight in our house, so we began our journey there. We discussed that your brain is a muscle and, like other muscles, you have to use it to make it stronger. Watching TV is not using your brain. We shouldn’t watch too much TV because it doesn’t ‘flex’ the muscle. This went over shockingly smoothly. Their little wheels were turning, strong muscles are important! They began to cut themselves off after they had their allotted screen time. I was curious to see how far I could push this new muscle concept with them.
My kids are 6, 3 and 2 years old. They have no concept of what it means to say a person’s name too many times. Or how it might not be acceptable to ask the same question 5 times in a 10 second time span. Telling them to have patience, just wasn’t working. Cue the patience muscle. You can flex your patience muscle by only saying my name once then waiting until I answer before saying it again 100 times. You can also flex your patience muscle by waiting until I am done in the restroom instead of coming in to tell me that Green Lantern is in fact greener than Hulk. Flex your patience muscle and watch it grow. I make a huge deal when they do this. GREAT JOB, look how strong your patience muscle is, it’s so much bigger than mine!!! They eat it up!
To take our muscle adventure further, we developed a kindness muscle. To flex your kindness muscle, you do something nice without being asked. This one is limitless. Help your brother clean up his toys, share willingly, ask a friend to play a game with you, random acts of kindness toward strangers. This one has serious potential to be my favorite. It is still in the beta phase at our house, but I expect positive results on it.
I have plans to continue this muscle flexing with healthy eating, being thankful and even failing, but I am afraid they may be onto me soon, so I have to pick my time to attack, luckily I have a strong patience muscle.
What muscles would you add for your family?
