1. Quit repeating yourself.

Don’t say it if you don’t mean it. If you do say it, mean it. Say it once, leave it alone, then ACT if necessary to follow through on what you’ve said.
P.S. When saying stuff to your kids, e.g, instructions, commands, suggestions, etc., remember to be CLEAR and be BRIEF. Clear: don’t ask when you are actually telling. Don’t offer an option if there really isn’t one. Don’t confuse the issue. Don’t give too many choices. Simple is best here. Brief: The longer you talk, the less your kids hear. Short, sweet, and to the point.

2. Get rid of (at least) half the toys in your home.

If you’re thinking this is extreme, try it. Box up half of the toys/gear/supplies and stick it in the garage, attic, closet, whatever. If your kids ask for it specifically, then consider it worth keeping. If that hasn’t happened in a few weeks, give it away. Kids don’t need stuff as much as they need space, time, and freedom for creativity.

3. Equip yourself for the toughest meal time.

Maybe that’s breakfast for you, getting everyone out the door on time. Or maybe it’s dinner, what my sis and I commonly refer to as the witching hour, when everything and everyone seems to fall apart just as we’re trying to get supper finished and served. Either way, anticipate the stress by 1) planning quick, simple, easy meals; 2) keeping your pantry/fridge/freezer stocked so you always have something on hand; and 3) getting as much prep done ahead of time as you can.

4. Create a simple, daily routine for kids to follow.

Kids, in general, like routines. A simple routine does not mean you have to schedule your day and theirs in fifteen-minute increments. In fact, I beg of you, please don’t do that. But do establish some daily habits, like first we have breakfast, then we do chores, then we have art time… You can still have plenty of “unplanned” blocks of time, but giving yourself and your kids some mile markers through the day helps keep everyone sane, calm, and happy.

5. Institute room time.

Room time is essential, I think, if you have more than one kid (or hey, even if you only have one) and if you want to keep your sanity and give them their own creative space, too. We all need some down time, and especially for kids and stay-at-home Moms, we all need some down time away from each other. Room time provides that. In my house, it means the boys go to their room and shut the door and play with their toys in there (I don’t keep a ton of toys in there, by the way, mostly bigger, easy to pick up stuff like trucks. See #2.) Mara goes to her room and shuts the door and gets to chill by herself for a while. She actually asks for room time if I forget it. It gives her time to do some more complex stuff (art projects) or quieter games (her little ponies and dolls) that the boys often interrupt out in the main living areas.
I can hear if anybody destroys anything or gets hurt, but I can finish cooking dinner in peace or sit down and read for 30 minutes.

6. Quit feeling guilty about the FAIL days.

You’re a parent, you have days that are labeled with the big red FAIL stamp. This is how things go. We don’t like ‘em, and especially us Moms… oh, we think we should get it right, or mostly right, every single day. It’s not gonna happen. Yesterday was a FAIL day for me, to the point that I was really contemplating how much I could get for the kids if I put them on Craigslist. Lucky for them Joe got home just then… But you know what? We’re all human. The sooner we accept that, as parents, about ourselves, the sooner we can accept that our kids will also have faults, and we can deal with all those accumulate faults – theirs, ours, and everyone else’s – without freaking out. Freaking out, by the way, is not one of the 7 ways to be a better parent.

7. Reduce the demands on your life.

This one goes hand-in-hand with #6. It’s about expectations, and it’s about the fact that we often expect ourselves to live up to these demands that have accumulated over time. They can become burdensome, to say the least, and can keep us from enjoying life, relaxing, enjoying our kids, and doing the things that are really important (like napping). If you’re still obligated and performing simply because at some distant point in the past you agreed to some responsibility, consider if you might need to cut that off. We change, life changes, and we need to adjust the demands we allow ourselves to live under. More is definitely not better, unless you’re talking about more time with your kids, more time with your spouse, more time for yourself, more time to rest, and more time to be creative and have fun.

Image: mechika by I/Ong

Over the last few days, I’ve been skimming through Dr. Kevin Leman’s Becoming the Parent God Wants You to Be.
I picked it up from the church library after one of those weeks when I figured my fertility must have been oversight on God’s part. “Oh no, Annie had kids? That wasn’t supposed to happen…”

Yeah, yeah, one of those. And after one of those conversations in which a recently-returned-to-town friend casually threw out the, “So, what are you guys up to? What’s been going on with you lately?” bomb-of-a-question.

Eh? I wanted to say, Do you see these small people following me? They are what has been going on lately, and as far as I can tell, they are what will be going on for the next ten or fifteen or (dear God please help me) twenty years. That’s what I’m up to.

I held my tongue and said something vague and more appropriate. One of these days, though…

Anyway, on to the point, which I have now forgotten. Oh, yes, the book. The book that I brought home and which subsequently sat on my desk until another one of those weeks went by, at which point I pulled it out and thought, Maybe this would be more helpful if I read it.

Indeed.

“…godly parenting means treating your children the way God treats us, His children. He lovingly helps us make wise decisions about the realities of life.” (p. 21)

The line “treating your children the way God treats us” made me stop and think. God is not a taskmaster. God is not set on vengeance. God is not offended by our failures. God is not demanding our perfection. God is available. God is listening. God is speaking in ways I can understand, over and over again until I get it. God is not interested in the outward appearance, but in the heart. God is understanding, loving, gentle, kind, and merciful. God is truthful, firm, strong, and secure. God is happy: the joy of the Lord is my strength. How can He give me joy if He doesn’t have it Himself?

Ready for the obvious translation?

I should not be a taskmaster over my children. I should not be set on vengeance toward myself, for failing, or toward anyone else. I should not be offended my my children’s failures. I should not be demanding their perfection. I should be available. I should be listening, aware, watching. I should be speaking in ways that my children can understand, over and over again until they get it. I should not be so interested in how they look and should be completely interested in their little hearts. I should be understanding, loving, gentle, kind, and merciful. I should be truthful, firm, strong, and secure. (Not wavering. Not a pendulum.) I should be happy, too. It’s good to be happy.

I say “should be” not to pour guilt on myself or anyone else but to show us all what is possible.
Of course, with man these things are impossible. They are too high, too wide, too deep for my narrowness. But with God… with God…
all things are possible.

My goal is for my children to be as independent as they can be without hurting themselves or ignoring my authority.

Guilt-Free Independence

The only way children can have guilt-free independence is to be given clear limits and designated areas of freedom within those limits. Independence, too, is not the freedom to do whatever, whenever, however you want without regard to others. No true Christian ever has the “right” to that kind of irresponsibility, falsely deemed independence or freedom.

Freedom comes with limits, automatically, and the right way to teach children the real nature of freedom is to give them independence within certain constraints. For example, Mara has a shelf in her closet that is her “outfit” shelf. Once a week or so, I put 5 or 6 folded outfits on the shelf in a row. Every morning she is free to choose her outfit from that shelf. She has independence in choosing her outfit and dressing herself; she has limits in that her choice must come from a designated selection.

Freedom Is a Privilege

When the limits of freedom are ignored, a trust is broken; the right, the freedom, the independence has been abused. The only logical consequence is that the independence or freedom is either taken away completely or the privilege is reduced, the boundaries are tightened.

As a child, each freedom is a privilege. As an adult, certain freedoms we claim as rights but the vast majority are still privileges; when abused, they can be revoked. A child who is not willing to cheerfully respect the boundaries of his independence does not need more freedom but less.

Consequences of Abusing Freedom

I tell Mara and Robbie to stay in the front room and play while I take a basket of laundry to my bedroom. Three minutes later, I find them in the kitchen or wandering the hallway looking for me. What do I do? What is logical? Do I say, “Oh, I’m sorry, obviously you need more space and broader boundaries?”

No. He who is faithful in little will be faithful in much, and the converse is true: he who has not proven himself faithful in little will most likely not prove himself faithful with much. What I say is this: “Ah, you two disobeyed Mommy and went out of the limits I gave you. I can’t trust you with such big limits now. Go to the rug and stay there. Don’t leave the rug. That is your new limit.” Suddenly their freedom has been reduced. That’s a natural consequence of abusing freedom.

And my job now is to watch. The moment they edge off the rug, they receive a consequence. That’s how they learn to respect the limits that I put into place. (Conversely, as they show that they respect the limits I have put into place, I am now able to expand those limits for them.)

The Thing About Limits…

When kids break the boundaries and disregard the limits it is not because there is something wrong with the limits. No. It is because there is something wrong with the authority setting the limits: your authority. They do not respect your authority or believe your word, most likely because you have been inconsistent, threatening, repeating, and failing to stick to the limits you yourself put into place. You are not enforcing your own consequences, so they learn to disregard you.

Unfortunately, the lesson they are learning is one they will apply to all authority. You, the teacher in 6th grade, the state trooper, the new boss, and God. The home and the parents are the world for your child, and what she learns in the home and from the parents she applies to all places and all people.

I venture to say that it would be better for you to set no limits and at least let her learn from natural consequences than to set limits and threaten consequences which are ever-changing. At least she would learn something about the real nature of the world and the authority of God from natural consequences. She learns nothing helpful from your wavering. The lessons you teach her by vacillating are harmful lessons: how to manipulate, how to whine, that standards are not absolute, that authority is not to be respected, that there are no real absolutes, that rebellion pays off.

This Is Your Job

Ask yourself as a responsible parent: does your child need limits? Is he capable of setting reasonable boundaries for himself? No? Then it is your job to do so for him and your harm him when you waver and balk at this job. You leave him confused.

The limits are not the issue. Limits are circumstantial. Every child in every different culture and age has had a different set of limits, norms, standards applied. But there are still only two types of grown up people who emerge from all those countless variations of home, family, and parenting structures.

Pick One

The first type is the one who is happy, calm, capable, ready to serve or to lead, respectful of authority, and confident in his own powers in the world, creative, optimistic. The second type is the one who is panicked, uncertain, self-absorbed, insecure, selfish, moody, marked by a rebellious and apathetic spirit, with a stunted imagination and a dependency on society to define standards for him.
Yikes. I’ll take option A, please.

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Images

1. Lads a leaping courtesy of DragonDrop on Flickr.

What you do or don’t do in the morning sets the tone and effects the outcome of the rest of your day. It’s not that you can’t recover from a difficult morning, but it’s much better to start the day off right than try to recoup what’s left of it. Our bad habits, lack of habits, lack of planning, lack of self-discipline, and over-achiever tendencies conspire against us to make mornings miserable. The way you handle your morning matters for the rest of your day, and since your life is simply the sum of your days, you could sum it up like this: how you handle the first few hours of your day says a lot about what your whole life is and will be.

Putting Yourself in Charge

Kids, oh kids, are naturally curious creatures whose brains, somehow, are reprogrammed every night during sleep so that they wake up with one question rattling around in their brains: who’s in charge today, me or Mom? Even the well-trained, well-behaved little people will still be testing the waters in their own small way. What’s Mom like today? Is she on top of things? Does she have a plan? Does she know what’s going on? Or is she groggy, distracted, and easy to manipulate? Can I get away with whining today? Can I get my own way?

Your kids are going to push you as far as they can. They are finding out where the boundaries are, if they still exist, if they’ve shifted. Too often my kids find me a little unsure and disoriented in the morning, so they sneak in a few runs past the normal limits. The rest of the day is me trying to re-establish where I want the limits to be. I would save myself a lot of trouble if I would just be clear, first thing in the morning.

Applying It

• Get up before the kids. I don’t think it matters if you’re dressed or not, but you need to be aware and awake, not groggy and disoriented and in that pre-coffee “Huh?” stage.

• Drink up! Eat up! Get some food and caffeine going and get yourself alive.

• Remind yourself of what is important for the day; take a look at your calendar, or your to do list from the day before.

• Don’t let them get away with line-crossing; if you deal with it immediately and effectively on their first attempt of the day, you’ll have less to deal with as the day goes on.

A Word About Morning Routines (less is more)

Morning routines are important: they provide a structure while you’re still half-asleep, so you can just move on auto-pilot and make sure you get breakfast ready, kids dressed, kids on bus, husband to work… or whatever your morning schedule looks like. However, I’ve noticed a lot of organizational/home-making sites can over-emphasize morning routines, and that often results in us creating over-complicated, over-zealous routines that just make us want to crawl back into bed.

For moms, especially for moms of young children who still require a lot of hands-on help, the simpler the morning routine, the better. Of course there are exceptions; if you’re a morning person and you really thrive on structure and detail, create a routine that fits your preferences. For me, I don’t want a 20-point list first thing in the morning. I try to accomplish what I can the night before and keep my morning as simple as possible. (Pssst… I don’t even write my morning routine down…).

Applying It

My simple morning routine looks something like this:

• Stumble to bathroom, take care of necessities, get dressed (my clothes are on the bathroom counter, usually, so I don’t have to think about that part)
• Get some coffee, load up Joe’s lunch bag, eat a banana
• Go to my office, Bible/journal, then work on writing projects until kids wake up (refill coffee as needed)
• Set out breakfast for the kids, take bottle to the baby
• Straighten my bedroom
• Change, dress, & feed baby, clean up kitchen
• Help kids get dressed, start the day

There are certain things you already do in the morning (breakfast, dress, take care of children) and making them deliberate – by putting them into a simple, repeatable routine – just puts you in charge.

Something to Look Forward To

I’m a morning person, but I still have a difficult time hopping out of bed when my alarm goes off. For you night people, I know it’s even harder. One tip: Reward yourself for getting up in the morning when you should (as opposed to sleeping in until the absolute last minute, then rushing around in a frenzy).

For me, the coffee and the quiet solitary time to write is a huge reward. My days are full and fun and busy with lots of teaching and talking and playing and working and coming and going; but I’m a person who recharges by being alone. The time in the morning for myself is sacred; it’s about God, it’s about me, it’s about my goals and passions. It’s not about my husband or the kids or the house.

Applying It

What makes it worthwhile for you to get out of bed? You introverts and writerly types might relate to my personal reward system; the rest of you will be thinking something like why would I get out of bed for that?

So you need to come up with your reward. It could be something cumulative (if I get up five mornings in a row, I get to buy a new purse..) but I think definite, immediate rewards work better: something you get as soon as you’ve accomplished the goal, so your sleep-deprived mind starts associating the good reward with the getting up out of bed. A great breakfast, a good cup of coffee, a morning walk, a new magazine or book waiting for you, a piece of chocolate, whatever. It doesn’t have to be big, but something you enjoy and look forward to and, preferably, something you can repeat every day as part of your morning routine.

Tips for Making Morning Easier

• Simplify, simplify, simplify. Make things easy on yourself.
• Hide the alarm clock in the next room so you have to get out of bed to turn it off. (If you can, put your reward within sight of it.)
• Put your clothes out in the bathroom. One less thing to figure out in the morning.
• Breakfast should be simple, easy, and require very little thought from you, unless you just enjoy cooking it. I don’t. I hate cooking breakfast (even though, in general, I love cooking.) So we eat simple breakfast: Joe often makes a smoothie for me and himself, or I just eat a piece of fruit or some yogurt. The kids get cereal or a piece of toast or oatmeal, with milk and a banana on the side. Simple, repetitive.
• Get your coffee ready the night before, so all you have to do is push the button; or get a programmable coffee maker so it’s already hot and ready when you get to the kitchen.
• Drink a big glass of water first thing, when you brush your teeth. It helps get your body energized and going, plus you need it after a night’s sleep.
• Try to pick things up the night before, get the dishes done, so you don’t walk into a mess. Nothing makes me want to go hide in bed more than a dirty kitchen and a messy house. Ick.
• Have a planner or list or calender out where you see it so you start thinking about your day, what’s ahead, what you’re excited about, what you want to accomplish.
• Turn on some music or talk radio so the silence doesn’t lure you back to sleep.

Relaxed Days

A note on sleeping in: I think sleeping in is great, sometimes. I love it when we have an open Saturday and we just kind of meander out of bed whenever (usually earlier than I want due to kids who wake up) and hang out in our pajamas. Sometimes I’ll choose to do that on a weekday, especially if it’s been a hectic or extremely tiring week already and we’re all worn out. There’s nothing wrong with choosing to move slow and be relaxed, and sometimes that’s exactly what we need. Choose your slow mornings deliberately. There’s nothing relaxing about oversleeping and then having to rush.
On weekday mornings, if you need a slower day but you still have to get people out the door, try going ahead and getting up as normal, going through your routine to get the necessities done, and then collapse on the couch with a movie and whatever kids are left at home with you. Or go back to bed, if you’re kid-free! That way you can enjoy your slower days, no guilt, no rush.

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Image by Lincolnian on Flickr.

They may not know it, but
I’m always close, watching, listening, protecting. Why? Right now, it’s about guiding and training their behavior, protecting them from any sort of abuse, and guarding their little hearts from fear, insecurity, confusion.
That means I don’t just blithely send them off to whatever activity or childcare is offered. My default is that they stay with me. I want to know what’s going on with them, what they’re experiencing. I have to be there to know that.

I choose very carefully the people who take care of them when I need a sitter – it’s grandparents or Aunties or, very rarely, a single gal I know and trust who has a great track record with us. I have a few other standbys – married women who are raising/have raised kids in the same kind of protecting, nurturing way – but every there I’m careful, prayerful. Paranoid? Maybe, but I don’t think so. These children – my children – are innocent little travelers in a big, rough world.

They’ll grow up and be capable of handling it, but that’s not for a while yet. Right now their hearts and minds are so tender, impressionable. A scary cartoon has a big effect. If I let them loose into a world of confusing, conflicting adult standards, the number of negative experiences would increase 1000%. Not all would be really bad. A kid doesn’t have to be abused to become hurt, scared, and unsure about right and wrong.
I want my children to grow up to be adults who know right and wrong as absolutes and who have a positive, optimistic outlook. Differing standards and negative experiences undermine those two goals. No, I can’t control everything. I’m not saying I always say no, or that I never let them out to learn and interact. I am saying this, though: I’m there.

I’m there to see what happens, to explain, to shield, to provide security and reason even when things are difficult. I tell my kids the truth. When our dog died, I told them. When they asked if Gigi (my step Mom) was my Mommy, I explained: No, my Mommy died. (Their answer: Like our doggie died? Yes, kids, death is death.)
They live in this fallen world too and they can’t be shielded from all pain, nor should they be. But I’m in charge of their pain management. Joe and I are the interpreters of the world for them. When big scary things happen, we are there to put it in context for them. And you don’t know what a big scary thing is to them unless you’re there.

So. Unless one of my tried-and-true, trusted sitters is available, our kids stay with me. And even when the sitters are available, most of the time our kids stay with me. I love them. I want them with me. I want to be there. We leave them maybe twice a month for a date night out. Other times we have date night in (better dress code…).
I pass on most Mommy’s Day Out, drop and shop, etc programs where there are way too many factors out of my control. Every week or two, when I get claustrophobic and need time to be me-sans-Mommyness, Joe keeps the kids at home and I go out for a couple of hours.

For classes and fun stuff like dance or gym or sports that I want them to be part of (and there aren’t many), I make sure 1) it’s a group deal with 2+ adults there at all times and 2) I stay and watch to see how things go for a while before I leave, IF I leave and 3) I’m always early for pickup time, to see how things wrap up and to be sure my child isn’t left alone unsupervised or uncertain about what’s net. I avoid situations that I can’t predict with accuracy when it comes to leaving my children.

That’s the place I’ve come to with my kids. They are very young right now, and as they grow we will have a bit more freedom. But I come back to this truth: these little people are given to me as a trust. No one else has the heart and instinct and mind to mother my children, because God gave that to me. I’m their Mom, and these days of intensive mothering are few and swiftly passing. I want to make the most of them.

(Poor kids. This means they’re definitely going to end up weird like me. Mwahahaha.)

What do you think? How do you handle the endless opportunities for outings? What are you standards? How do you fit in alone time?

This post is part of the 30-Minute Blogging Challenge at SteadyMom.

I realized today that the reason I most often get frustrated with my children is that I am frustrated with myself. I’ve gotten behind, I’ve lost focus, I’m having a bad hair day… For one reason or another, I’m not meeting my personal goals. I’m not being consistent and diligent with myself, and that becomes (too quickly) me not being consistent and diligent with my children. And how quickly that escalates into lots of whining, lots of nagging, lots of tears, lots of frustration. The kids don’t do so well, either…

It is when I am frustrated that I don’t notice the horrible things I am teaching my children.

It’s Never Your Fault.

They fall and get an owie and we say, “Oh that mean old table.” Why not “Hey, watch your head when you crawl under the dinner table”? Wouldn’t that be better advice, and help them avoid another head-table collision in the future?

You Always Get To Choose.

We do this a million times a day. Red cup or blue cup? Pink pajamas or purple pajamas? Crackers or pretzels? Juice or milk? Up or down? The Alphabet Song or The Itsy Bitsy Spider Song? Markers or crayons? We’re trying to be nice. We like watching their little decision-making mechanism at work.

We think it’s cute, but we end up  creating a whole lot of unnecessary confusion for our children, hassle for ourselves, and in the end a child who expects that, always, in every situation, he gets to make a choice.

Real life, of course, is full of choices but also full of situations in which there are no options. Pain, hurt, injury, Speedos, work, loneliness, heartburn, hardship, grief, traffic, betrayal, bad hair days, rain, nosy neighbors, PMS, aging, IRS, taxes, polyester, death: you can avoid some, but you certainly can’t avoid all. The only choice that always exists is the choice of how we respond.

We would bless our children to teach them the art and skill of choosing happiness no matter what, choosing acceptance when there is no other option, choosing gratitude… Those are good choices to know how to make. Choosing red or blue never really helped anyone, even when it comes down to politics.

Life Is Fair.

Everyone gets equal portions of cake passed out on equally pretty plates. Siblings endure the same bedtime even when the age differs significantly. We count to make sure they all have the same number of presents, within the same price range, the same opportunities, experiences, advantages, and on and on. I don’t need to point out why this is a stupid move.

Anyone who has experienced life beyond the cradle knows it isn’t fair. That we long for justice, that we feel justice should prevail, is true. This is why we love movies with a clear-cut hero and villain and you-know-who gets what’s coming to him in the end. Rah rah rah for truth, justice, and the American way! We have ideals, but we also have reality.

Everybody gets hangnails and indigestion, not just the bad guys. Sometimes the nicest people have the crummiest lives. Sometimes the hardest workers end up the poorest. Why we feel like we should coddle our children into thinking otherwise is beyond me. Of course, it’s nice to be even and equal, and it’s nice that we can smooth some things out for kids, but we parents make a career of it.

Right and Wrong Are Relative.

We daily, hourly instill in them a principle of morals by preference: if it feels good (at the time) then it’s right, if it feels otherwise then it’s wrong. It’s by our own failure to be consistent with discipline – for ourselves and for them – that we pound this into their little brains. No wonder they wind up confused about God, truth, right, wrong, professional sports, and Santa Claus.

The good news is that love covers a multitude of sin. It is our own sin that needs covering, when it comes to being a parent. “We’re not ready for a baby yet,” I’ve heard young couples say. Heavens no. They’re not ready. No one ever is.

How can you be ready to be a perfect moral example, to wear spit-up like a badge of honor, to second-guess every truth you’ve ever known, to realize that your failures directly influence your child, to give up sleep, sex, sanity, selfishness? You’re never ready; you just go into it blind and deaf and mute and come out of it seeing and hearing and singing (sometimes yelling). Parenting is the strangest thing a person can ever do. I highly recommend it.

Images courtesy of octavioags,  minotaurus, David Knox, felly1000. Quote from The Training of Children in the Christian Family, by Luthur Allan Weigle, p. 14.

I was writing about happiness. I had stopped writing about happiness just to go get that little booger up from his nap. I was needing a break from the sort of thing I kept finding in my research on happiness. Things like this:

Happiness is…“the ultimate state of conscious feeling where all the five senses integrate into a purest form of dreamless love. Happiness flows out of ‘FORGIVE’ness and not ‘FORGET’ness,” says Asesh Datta here.

This is why happiness is so elusive; we’ve just defined the heart and soul out of it.

How in the name of all that is yellow and buttery are you supposed to make all five senses integrate into a purest form of dreamless love?

First of all, what is dreamless love? Is love normally full of dreams? Is it better without the dreams? How do you get it to be dreamless? How can you tell? Can you be happy with love that stubbornly retains one or two dreams involving giant French fries, a purple tuxedo, and a burro named Roxy?

And how do you integrate all five senses into this sort of state? Let’s just refresh on all five senses: seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching. Please explain to me how you can smell dreamless love. Please. I want to know.

Anybody?

By now you’re thinking Okay, ha ha ha with the sarcasm, where is the happiness?

Well, it’s elusive, like a deer, so quit being so pushy.

I take that back. Happiness isn’t elusive. Happiness is hard work. We pretend it’s elusive so we don’t have to fess up to being lazy. That way we can continue to be unhappy without feeling like it’s our own fault, which allows us to continue complaining about the utter injustice of the universe and how we’re gonna tell that Happiness Guru a thing or two when we get up there. Or over there. Or through there. Whatever.

Happiness isn’t elusive, like a deer. Happiness is big and ugly, like a rhino. Happiness likes stare-downs. Happiness needs plenty of space and care and feeding. Happiness makes great big piles of poop.

Uh, my analogy might have broken down on that last one.

And now I have a story to tell. I finished the line above (the one about the rhino poop, you remember?), and went to wake up my napping children. Well. They weren’t exactly napping anymore. They had been awake for an undisclosed amount of time as I recorded my brilliant and vanishing insights into your happiness. That is the price they pay for having a famous authoress a writer as a mother.

I opened the door to my daughter’s room. I opened the door to my son’s room. I smelled rhinos. Well, I smelled something I now unfailingly associate with rhinos.

Those are the little ironies of life. You get up from writing about happiness and walk in to wake your wonderful, cuddly, cute baby only to find yourself scraping poo off the floor, which was put there by said baby, whom you are currently not referring to as “wonderful” or “cute” and very definitely not “cuddly.” Half a roll of paper towels and a bottle of disinfectant later, your happiness is being put to the test. And this is the essay question that stumps you at the end:

Can you be happy while you are cleaning up poo?

I will now defer to my collection of quotations from people much smarter than me:

Abraham Lincoln, who certainly knew a thing or two about cleaning up gigantic messes, said that “Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”

Benjamin Franklin said that “It is the working man who is the happy man. It is the idle man who is the miserable man,” so according to the illustrious Mr. Franklin, me cleaning poo off the floor is a happier person than me sitting around idly in that cushy blue chair, reading a novel and nibbling pistachios. I don’t know. I’ve always admired B.F. but he seems to be falling a little short of insightful on this one.

Here’s what I think: happiness doesn’t come when you have more fun; fun comes when you have more happiness.

We wait for certain conditions and expect them to provide happiness and we’re always disappointed. Reality can never live up to fantasy. Disney World is fun when you’re there, but it’s never quite as good as it was in those hours of imagining how great it would be to go to Disney World.

You don’t imagine standing in line for an hour, melting into a pool of sweat in the shiny asphalt, and wearing a scratchy polyester jumpsuit as a fill-in for Captain Kirk in the make-your-own Star Trek movie event. So you go, you have fun, but it’s not as good as the expectation. Too often we let that gap between what we get and what we expect just destroy our happiness.

I didn’t expect poo on the bed when I walked into my son’s room, but that’s what I got. And there was my moment of destiny in the pursuit of happiness: do I curse and mutter? Do I let it ruin my day? Do I yell at my child?

I’m basically a selfish person, and I’d rather be happy than be unhappy. So I stopped and looked and then I laughed. Because, really, what else can you do?

I laughed because it’s a great story. I laughed as I took the sheets of the bed, bathed the child, and mopped the floor. (Okay, I might have stopped laughing at some point because you can’t just laugh indefinitely; bear with me, I’m trying to make a point.) Here’s the point: Happy is up to you. Happy doesn’t make the mess go away, but it does make cleaning up any kind of mess better.

Oh, and yeah, I also laughed because it’s not as great a story as my friend’s, whose daughter not only took off her diaper and pooped but then proceeded to wipe it all over the walls. Comparison isn’t always a bad thing.

Images courtesy of mpeterke and lanuiop.