Light Dawns on Marble Head

Today we spent the day at a company-sponsored event at an amusement park nearby, and wow, was it a wonderful day. The weather is finally cooling down into my comfort zone, which always makes me happy. The park was all ours--it was closed to the general public and food and drinks were provided for free. And Sunshine, for the first time EVER, wanted to ride the rides!!! It was so much fun--she went on every ride in the kids section of the park and a few in the adult areas where kids could ride with parents. She was absolutely hysterically funny all day--no ride was too fast, too spinny, too bumpy. She was a "brave girl" (her words) and wanted to ride them all.

And all day, both she and Deuteronomy were well-behaved and happy. It was really a miraculous day with no tantrums or time-outs.

It was also unexpected.

Every other time we've gone to an amusement park or a fair or a festival of some sort, someone--grandparents, aunts, uncles--came along to "help" with the kids. And every other time we've had meltdowns and tantrums and bad behavior. Since we were going it alone this time, I assumed we'd really have our hands full.

I didn't even realize how well the day was going until we'd been at the park for about 5 hours already--I looked at my watch and was shocked to see how late it was. We had had one of the best afternoons in recent history on a day when I least expected it.

And like a light switch was flipped in my head, I suddenly realized that all those other times, the kids (Sunshine especially) were just overwhelmed and overstimulated by all the people we had along. We expect them to handle all the different personalities and everyone shouting and trying to coordinate and getting everyone moving in the same direction, which so often seems like herding cats. We expect them to handle all that, when really, I end up irritated and overwhelmed in those situations, so why shouldn't they?

Duh. We have totally been setting them up for failure. And it took me 3 years to figure it out.