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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?

Once you make a Perfect Moment post, you are qualified to place this button on your blog.

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:


0 Responses

  1. What a beautiful story. He just needed to be heard. Nice work, Mom. I bet you have a few more days like that before the holidays are over.

  2. That sounds like a beautiful, special moment between you and your son. We all just want to be heard…

  3. I just love this. mel’s post sat with me a while also. how wonderful to see it work for little reed to. poor guy. I’m so happy HE had that moment with you. he must have felt SO much better.

  4. It’s amazing how sometimes we have to give just a little and it means so very much. Wonderful post (and a reminder to me).

  5. What a beautiful story. He just needed to be heard. Nice work, Mom. I bet you have a few more days like that before the holidays are over.

  6. That sounds like a beautiful, special moment between you and your son. We all just want to be heard…

  7. I just love this. mel’s post sat with me a while also. how wonderful to see it work for little reed to. poor guy. I’m so happy HE had that moment with you. he must have felt SO much better.

  8. It’s amazing how sometimes we have to give just a little and it means so very much. Wonderful post (and a reminder to me).

  9. You realize that you have described a textbook example of emotion coaching, right?Reason #423 why you are great.

  10. Mine was a perfect day rather than just a perfect moment. A string of perfect moments?Remember how you just spoke about your lack of patience? Well, your actions contradict you. You just showed a lot of patience and understanding with Reed.

  11. You are so tuned in to people and situations. That’s just one of the many things I admire about you…

  12. You are wonderful, kind, and compassionate. Who needs the allusion of perfection? Thank you so much for sharing this, very inspiring.Off to finish my PMM post…

  13. Sometimes you just need to be sad. It’s easy to try to fix everything for our kids. Seeing my child cry it the hardest thing and all I want to do is make it better. It’s harder on us to let them be sad without fixing it but I think that’s exactly what he needed.

  14. So beautiful, Lori. I’ve got tears in my eyes – it is such a powerful thing just to be heard and understood. Reed is very lucky to have a mama who is awake and mindful of how meaningful simple presence can be.

  15. You realize that you have described a textbook example of emotion coaching, right?Reason #423 why you are great.

  16. Mine was a perfect day rather than just a perfect moment. A string of perfect moments?Remember how you just spoke about your lack of patience? Well, your actions contradict you. You just showed a lot of patience and understanding with Reed.

  17. You are so tuned in to people and situations. That’s just one of the many things I admire about you…

  18. You are wonderful, kind, and compassionate. Who needs the allusion of perfection? Thank you so much for sharing this, very inspiring.Off to finish my PMM post…

  19. Sometimes you just need to be sad. It’s easy to try to fix everything for our kids. Seeing my child cry it the hardest thing and all I want to do is make it better. It’s harder on us to let them be sad without fixing it but I think that’s exactly what he needed.

  20. So beautiful, Lori. I’ve got tears in my eyes – it is such a powerful thing just to be heard and understood. Reed is very lucky to have a mama who is awake and mindful of how meaningful simple presence can be.

  21. Beautiful. You are such an empathetic mom. One who understands — I mean really understands — her children. What a great gift you’ve given to Reed. I bet he’ll remember that moment when he is older.

  22. Beautiful. You are such an empathetic mom. One who understands — I mean really understands — her children. What a great gift you’ve given to Reed. I bet he’ll remember that moment when he is older.

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