Improv-a-mama

I’m always interested in expanding and deepening my understanding of stories and storytelling and the web can be a treasure trove of ideas.

Here are some story inspiration links:

Pirates in Pajamas (I linked to the homepage so you can see how their story begins…there’s lots of great ideas on the site and their blog for storybuilding)

“How We Tell Stories” at Teacher Tom’s Blog (So much to read an enjoy on Teacher Tom’s blog! Reading about daily life and action at his preschool often inspires me to look at what I can do with LP in a new light.)

“Storytelling Tips for Oral Language Development” at Literacy Connections (Straightforward and specific.  A little something for the left side of your brain.)

“If I had the Courage…” at the Improvisational Storyteller (This is my friend Kat’s bog.  Contemplating her questions inspired me in my own storytelling AND I love the idea to starting stories using the magic “if.” I can see using it to explore emotions with LP by starting stories “If I felt sad…” or “If I felt mad…”)

Do you have a favorite story structure or link to share? I’d love it if you would share!

This bog is part of the Moms’ 30 Minute Blog Challenge over at SteadyMom.

Performing improvisors know the almost impossible to resist pull of going onstage when a scene is going well.

I’ve stood on the sidelines knowing that I am not needed — the actors are solidly playing the characters they have created, the story is flowing, the audience is laughing or crying — and yet, I want to be onstage. I want to be a part of that. Who wouldn’t? When it feels good just to be close to that action, it is easy to imagine that it would be incredible to be in the middle of it. That thought is never at the forefront of my consciousness; my imagination gives me all kinds of ideas that would justify getting out there, but underneath it all, I know that I just want to be out there for the good stuff.  From inside a scene that is rocking and rolling along, I’ve felt the “oh no” as other improvisors pile on in to try and be a part of it.

It is the flipside of hanging out in the wings when things are going badly and you don’t know what to do. When the stage is cold and the improvisors on it are floundering, just getting yourself on the stage to make some kind of offer is the best thing. When you do that, even if it doesn’t help the scene, at the very least, your fellow players know they are not alone. There is the difference — when the stage is cold, we need to be reminded that we are not alone and return to the most basic principles of taking care of our partners and triggering their imaginations.  When the stage is hot, we need to know that sometimes the best offer is the one held back in respect of what is already happening.  The choice to not to do something can be just as playful and wonderful a choice as doing something.

I have gotten (and given) the post-show note, “You weren’t needed in that scene. Stay offstage.” It is common. It is so human. When there’s fun, we want in.  Yet going on stage when you are not needed often throws a scene off-kilter.  The magic of the moment can be deflated by the over-eager newcomer.

And so it is in playing with our little people too. There is a delicate balance to be found between offering opportunities to play together, joining play, letting the little people take the lead, taking the lead, and staying out of it.

Which brings me to yesterday morning’s cat pancakes.

LP & I had a number of days in a row where all our mornings felt rushed. So yesterday we were taking it slow and I suggested making pancakes for breakfast. The response was an enthusiastic “YES!”

In the middle of helping pour and mix, she climbed down from the stepstool to harvest some cats to add. (She has long been into the book Farm Fresh Cats by Scott Santoro.  In this book, Farmer Ray’s cabbage crop mysteriously turns into a cat crop. Very quirky and fun.) She went back and forth a number of times, harvesting her imaginary cats from the other room and running in to add them to the pancake batter. Throughout this, I bantered with her –calling her “Farmer Ray” and talking about cat harvest — while cooking and cleaning up a bit.

Once the pancakes (with blueberries) were cooking, LP was back on the stool counting cat eyes (blueberries). Her face was alight with delight, her energy was big and bold; it was just fun to be next to her.  And I noticed myself start to think about making pancakes in the shape of cats. Surely that would be even more fun, right?

Fortunately there was no space to start a new pancake at the moment of that idea so I got to sit with it a minute. And realized that, LP was completely engrossed in the experience she had created.  My offer of cat-shaped pancakes (which of course won’t really look much more like real cats than my un-cat-shaped pancakes), would be the equivalent of going onstage when I am not needed. My offer of shaping the pancakes intentionally like cats might have  deflated her imagining of them.

LP’s imagination was off and running, her play was full and robust.  She was showing me the level of interaction that added to her pleasure;  my role was mostly audience with a little verbal interaction.  If she had been minimally engaged in playing this out, joining her in harvesting the cats or making my sorta-cat-shaped pancakes would be invitations for more engagement as I tested out things to spark her imagination.

Throughout breakfast, I stayed focus on being appreciative  audience for LP’s Farmer Ray;  It was easy to do, especially since Farmer Ray enjoyed her cat pancakes with gusto.

I’m always on the look out for writing about play that inspires me and (or) makes me think. Here are some of my current favorites on the web:

“A Part of Their World: Adult Roles in Child’s Play”  at Not Just Cute

“Let Kids Just Play” at Raising Happiness

“just add places to pause, places to hide, places to rest” at Let the Children Play

“Power Struggles Dissolve with Laughter” at Hand in Hand Parenting

The sunflowers we planted in our butterfly garden are giving us a lovely surprise.  The package says to expect 3-4 foot plants and ours are growing beyond expectations.

I’m getting a lot of delight watching our sunflowers grow…especially since they are growing beyond the boundaries of our expectations and I like that as a metaphor. We, like the sunflower seeds, have all this potential for growth inside if we can find, make and/or create the conditions for it to happen.  Sometimes in the daily, weekly repetitive grind of parenting, I forget to see all the ways that I have grown.

Something I love about being an improvisor is that there is always room for growth.  There is always room to deepen storytelling, play more nuanced characters, develop new skills at an accent, learn a new genre – the list goes on and on.  I find that to be true as a parent too; there is so much room to develop patience, learn new approaches to supporting independence and skill-building, new ways to play together….yes, that list goes on and on as well. There is a challenge in both cases, to appreciate and enjoy the stage you are at, while working on the next new thing.  AND like those sunflowers growing taller than expected, I have experienced in both arenas, growth I did not predict or expect.

Those sunflower seeds have the inner code to grow and so do we.  Whatever our metaphoric water and sun and good soil is, it is good when we find it and can grow more than anyone, even ourselves expected.

LP has caught the “sunflower bug” too. When it is time to wash hands in the bathroom, she crouches on the stepstool until I act out watering and shining the sun on her and she grows tall enough to reach the sink. (Actually I quite look forward to her growing another inch or two so she can reach the faucet on her own….that or I need to find a taller stepstool for her.)

This post is part of the Moms’ 30 Minute Blog Challenge at SteadyMom.

I keep trying to write this post and failing.  My words tangle and snarl up. My thoughts that seem so clear at 3 am arrive on the screen without a sense of cohesion.  So I’m trying a 30-Minute attempt it and accept that it may take more than one post for me to dig out the meaning AND connect it to the practice of improv.

We all have habits of mind. There are many ways these are useful; we develop these habits for good reasons.  But life changes, we change and sometimes old habits of mind aren’t useful anymore.  Many spiritual practices and therapy modalities have techniques for noticing and letting go (or changing) habits of mind.

These days I find I am particularly challenged by  my own habits of mind that are not useful anymore. And it is hard to let them go.

After LP’s birth, I suffered from postpartum depression. One of the places I experience the lingering effects is in my habits of mind.  I used to be a much more hopeful, optimistic person and I miss that way of being. I have the distinct experience of having my generally positive view of the world enhanced over the years by the practice of  improv. And then I have the distinct experience of my generally positive view of the world being absorbed by all of the dark, sad and lonely feelings of ppd.

One reason that I say that the practice of improvisation builds optimism is that creating together opens us up to alternate stories.   When we create together in the moment, we have a give and take of ideas and actions. The story that I start to tell in my head, leaping forward into the future, is not the story that gets told because my partner has different ideas.  Together we find a story path which is different than the story we would tell either of us alone. The world and specifically any given moment becomes filled with possibilities.

When I get drawn back down in my negative habits of mind, I am not in the present. I am spinning in the sadness of the past. I am wrapped up in grief for the things that didn’t happen and the experiences I missed out on because I was depressed. My world becomes quite narrow and I lose sight of those possible other stories.

An example:

LP has been getting more easily frustrated recently and cries out, “I can’t do it. It’s too hard.”  This shakes me.  I believe this is all part of her normal development; she’s three and struggling to be more independent while simultaneously longing for dependence. Yet I have fears about how my ppd has affected her and those particular words are triggering for me. All those months when that is what I felt day after day — “I can’t do this. It’s too hard.” Every day for 10 months before I found a treatment that helped me and even then it took almost 2 years to feel like myself again.

To help me not go spinning off into my own sadness when this occurs, I made a plan.  When she says it, I am prepared to sit by her side and say “I know you can do this” and “Why don’t you give it another try?” and “You feel like it’s hard. It’s good to try hard things.” and “I’m going to stay right here with you while you try again” or “I’ll be in the other room when you’ve done it” (depends on the circumstance). I need these prepared responses because otherwise I get caught up in over-thinking (and over-feeling) the moment, ascribing meaning to it that it may or may not have…I cannot know for sure.  And we need to get through the day.

That’s my time cut-off too….so more to come in part two.

This post is part of the Moms 30 Minute Blog Challenge; a really wonderful idea (that keeps me writing at least once a week!) from Jamie over at SteadyMom.

This craft project has been in the works for a long time.  I was inspired by Future Craft Collective’s Prayer, Wish, Hope Flags. I even sewed up a bunch of muslin flags a few months ago. Where those flags have gone, I do not know.  So starting over, I decided to use the basic idea of the flags to create a photo banner that could brighten up LP’s room (with her favorite color as the base). At first I was going to make iron on photo transfers but then I remembered I had leftover photo sleeves which also have the added bonus of letting us swap the photos.

I sewed the flags while LP played with pins and thread.  Then discovered that while my old scrapbook photoholders were a good idea, they didn’t actually stick to the fabric.  So I sewed them to the flags. Voila!

LP chose the photos and I printed them out on our ink jet printer.

Here’s a close up of one flag (LP with her beloved chickens):

And here’s the whole thing:

I’m looking forward to seeing how the photo rotation goes. I think it will be a fun way to prepare for visiting family and friends and remembering special occasions.

LP has taken up grunting a sound that is close to “yeah” instead of saying “yes.”

It bugs me.

So I started paying attention to what I actually say when I mean “yes.”

I say a lot of things — ok, sure, uh huh, yeah, in a minute and soon. I nod. I do what she asks without saying anything at all.

Yes is a beautiful word. It is a pleasure to hear. Truly, I find it a pleasure to say. And I had let it slip out of my vocabulary.

So that is my improv practice for the week.

To say “yes.” Literally.

This post is part of the Moms’ 30 Minute Blog Challenge over at SteadyMom.

This idea is borrowed from our friends down the block. Last week when LP & I went over to play, her friend E showed us his outdoor kitchen. I thought it was a brilliant idea AND we have a lot of old building supplies hanging around (cinder blocks, slate slabs, bricks).  Since we rent and the owner wants to hold on to this stuff, this is a great way to use it and not just keep moving it out of the way.

LP & I planted a “kitchen garden” of parsley, basil & poppies in the cinder blocks.  We’ll see what happens…for the meantime, it has added a new fun element to the yard.

This post is part of the Moms 30 minute blog challenge over at SteadyMom.

This past week has been going on for years.

There has been a lot of screaming from LP and a lot of insomnia from me (I’m not sure if there is a direct relationship or if those are two things that just happen to be going on simultaneously). A fairly disastrous combination.  She is tired and wants me to do everything for her; I am tired and want her to please just go play for a while. She’s at the end of her rope and so am I. Our playful spirit has not been present as we retract to just plain coping, coping, coping.

I can see the factors that add up to this moment. The transition from being away to back home is always difficult for LP and we have a house guest for a week (a dear friend we haven’t seen who is lovely in just about every way and has spoiled us rotten with his cooking while we treat him to hours of screaming) which shakes things up. And a growth spurt. And a number of little things that have kept our regular routine from being that comfort that I’ve witnessed it be for LP.

So I’ve been battening down the hatches. Looking for ways to slow down our day, do less. So much less that I’m climbing the walls a bit. But it seems to be helping. Slowly. Very, very slowly.

This afternoon, I had a big feeling of dread.  I could see she was feeling tender and thought I needed to come up with something really great to offer to do when all I really wanted to work on a gardening project.  The side of our house has gone wild with grass and poppies and a huge thorny blackberry plant that produces no berries. Since we have so little gardening space, I want to reclaim it. I had been hesitating because I love the poppies; I find them such a cheerful flower.  So the current batch is past flowering and I realized it was the right moment to collect seeds from the pods and then plant poppies at will.

Since I really had no energy for anything else, I told LP that we were going to do a gardening project expecting it would probably last all of 10 minutes, at best. As it turned out, seed collecting was the perfect thing for us. We sat together on the path, picking and emptying pods. And talking. There was no screaming. Not a single one.  When she was ready to move on, she did. No fuss.  I sat and continued my seed collecting and then started pulling them out.  LP came and went, moving between her own play and being with me. For over an hour.

I needed that.

And by bathtime tonight, I had a little playful spirit back. Not 100% but good enough.

LP with last year's poppies

This post is part of the Moms 30 Minute Blog Challenge over at SteadyMom.

We three are  adjusting back to life at home (complete with post-vacation/travel tantrums). It was a wonderful trip to visit Grandma and Auntie K and then travel together to Orcas Island to visit with family there too. Lots of delicious time to play and explore tidepools and meet animals (such a highlight for LP! Chickens and horses and alpacas! Crabs and limpets and barnacles!)

All that open play time, gave us lots of time for low-key improv. Something I love about vacation is the slower (and mostly un-plugged) pace which makes so much more room for “yes.”

One of the most special moments was at a rest stop of all places. After lunch, LP wanted to play so I started to teach her “Red light, Green light.”  She very quickly put her own spin on it AND enticed ImprovDad and Grandma into joining us.

This is one of those moments that I like to look at from an improv perspective.  It would be so easy to tell her that this game has “rules” and we have to follow them.  AND it is so much more joyful to follow her lead, to say “yes” and create a different version that springs from LP’s spontaneity. Something in the moment triggered her imagination and I certainly had more fun playing her version which has continued to evolve.  Currently “red light” means stop, “green light” means go, “orange light” means move in slow motion, “purple light” means hop like a bunny and “brown light” means run around flapping like a chicken. (Also there isn’t one caller in LP’s game…anyone can call out the color light and everyone moves.)

We followed up with ring-around-the-rosie…and I wish I had a photo of the four of us, holding hands, going around together in the sun.

Taking in that experience reminds me how delicious improvising with little people can be;  when a small thing captures their imagination, you get a lot of mileage (and delight) out of it!

LP explores Orcas Island.

This post is part of the Moms’ 30 Minute Blog Challenge over at SteadyMom.

A surprise joy of traveling with a 3 year old is experiencing a world of inhibition in an environment (airport) that is very rule-bound. (Of course it has many challenges too…but that’s a different kind of post.)

Yesterday LP was a rooster so she was running through the airport, flapping her arms and crowing “cook-a-doodle-doo!” It was lovely and the best way to spend our hour of time before boarding. (Bonus was her being the right kind of tired to chill out for the whole 2 hour flight to Seattle.)

I love her lack of inhibition and readiness to take flight.

This post is part of the Moms’ 30 minute blog challenge over at SteadyMom.

I’ve heard Keith Johnstone (a main improvisational inspiration in my life) say, “Imagine your partner’s imagination is a strange beast and you have to figure out what to feed it.”

So that is what I am often doing in playing with LP…paying attention to what delights, frustrates and inspires her and “feeding” her imagination more of that.

Within this process, repetition is often my friend.  My girl loves to get her whole body into an experience, so as long as I’m in the mood for mess, painting or mud play never grows old.  Even in storytelling, repetition is great. We return to favorite characters and sometimes move them into new situations and experiences.  All good stuff ~ taking what I know inspires and offering more opportunities to explore.

AND I am a limited resource.  Our imaginations have boundless potential but we need to keep experimenting with what to feed them to see what leads us to explore new realms.  There are ways that my life these days is much smaller than it used to be (in terms of external stimuli) and simultaneously much more intense internally.  To give LP and myself new “food” can be a challenge.

The incredible generosity of parent blogs has often provided inspiration as do seeing what other folks do with their kids when we are out in the world. And books, books, books. I’ve been trying to deepen our weekly library trips by talking about what she wants to read/learn about and delving more into nonfiction kids books. Also to mix up books that I’m drawn to with books that LP pulls off the shelf (usually because the cover is red).

Last week, ImprovDad took LP to the library and when I looked over the books he chose, I had an “a-ha!” moment.  New material to feed our imagination was easy to come by….sometimes have someone else select the books.  ImprovDad is attracted to different stories and aesthetics than I am and it was refreshing for my imagination too!

How do you find new ways to feed your and your little people’s imaginary beasts?

Ah, the wail of the Little Person.

Recently if I ask her to get something from her room, she bursts in dramatic tears and wails, “It isn’t in my room! There’s NOTHING in my room!”

Where did this come from? I wasn’t expected that kind of reaction for a number of years yet.

For the most part I find it really hard not to laugh at this one. It is so over the top. Part of my reaction is to understand it as her wanting me to do it for her and I’m trying to give her many opportunities to do for herself these days.

Yet as I kept wondering about where that reaction came from, I stumbled on my own inner wailings about “nothing.” (or “NOTHING!”) I get it kiddo, I am familiar with feeling that I have “nothing.” As I struggle with editing and revising my novel, I come up against it all the time. Here’s this world I’ve created that needs a ton of work to get more fully out of my head and on the page and yet, I have NOTHING to write.

It is true. When I’m not inspired, I have nothing to write… or cook for dinner…or dream plan about in a quiet moment.

Now I know that inspiration isn’t just about some magical muse moment. In improv, inspiration is taking a deep breath, opening your eyes to take in what is present and allowing yourself to go with what comes next. Sometimes what comes next is magical and sometimes it is mundane. The important thing is embracing that something comes next and allowing that something to exist.

Yes, LP, sometimes it really does feel like there’s nothing. And that’s when we need someone outside ourselves to help us go look.

This post is part of the Moms’ 30 Minute Blog Challenge…written in 5 minute increments over 4 days.

LP is in that wonderful stage of flowing from being one character to another.

She’s a waiter, a duck, a gosling, a panda, a red visor, Ernie, a dinosaur and a singing chicken all in the blink of an eye.  She dresses up in her rainbow “wandering cape” and wears a tutu to be a beluga.

Sometimes she has a role for me too. I’m waitress to her waiter, multicolored visor to her red one and the Count for her Ernie.

This spontaneous character play is  a wonderful chance to act together.  Even every day tasks become more fun when done in character. LP is much more willing to wash her hands as Ernie than as herself! And helping empty the dishwasher as the waiter was a total hit.

Some little people like to stick with a script. So if they are pretending to be a character from a book or tv, they want to do exactly what they’ve seen already.  (This is also more comfortable for some big people too…if that’s you, start by playing to your strength!) Playing characters together is a great chance to stretch their (and our) imaginations.  If you are ready to see what can happen, invite your little person character to do something new (i.e. off their “script”).  It can be an set activity or craft project OR a story adventure that you act out…what happens when Ernie and the Count find a jewelry box? Or learn to fly?

You also may find that you create new scenarios that your little persons loves to repeat (because oh, how they love to repeat).  LP and I told & acted out a story about a glass multicolored visor that broke into 30 pieces that she had to fix using 30 bandaids.  We’ve acted this out many, many times. Sometimes I throw in a new detail or ask her for more details just to keep in interesting for me.

I do find that her more imaginative (i.e. non-commmercial) characters delight me more. I’m happier pretending to be characters from books or made-up on the spot or objects from around the house. Fortunately for me that is the bulk of it (probably the happy result of being a low media family) AND I realize that’s my head trip.  For LP,  the commercial characters are just part of the delightful offerings the world makes to her imagination.

Mud Painting

Spring has come at last…and nothing is better than celebrating with mud.

LP & I made a fine mud puddle in a corner of the yard and set to play with it. Mud painting was the biggest hit with her on this day.

That’s my favorite kind of play. Open-ended and messy. The mud puddle was in the sun and gloriously warm and squishy.

Improv-a-Mama gets some expert mud painting on her leg.

Sleep is our challenge.

I’ve struggled with bouts of insomnia for as long as I can remember. Being mama to a challenged sleeper has been hard with bouts of being ridiculously hard. Recently we got blackout curtains for our room and her room. All of sudden, my sleep is significantly better (and at first, hers was too). It is miraculous! I never would have thought that our room is particularly light at night but these have cut my insomnia awake time in half.

Which unfortunately (for her) leads me to be way more grumpy with my little night owl. Who is (knock on wood) nearing the end of a phase of not wanting to sleep (at all).

One of the ways I’ve been helping her settle down is with a story about 2 ducklings we saw at a local farm last week.

These two ducklings, Peep & Squeek, are about 2 weeks old were recently rescued and brought to the farm. When we saw them they were happily swimming round and round and round in a little pond eluding every effort of the farmer to catch them. When he did catch them up (and let us and the other folks watching pet them and say hello up close), he put them in their “bed” (a large washtub with straw and a light for warmth). Within minutes they were curled up asleep.

LP loves to hear this story and it has been part of our bedtime ritual the past few nights. It was a great “a-ha” moment for me when it occurred to me to tell her this real life story. I realized the story could be a metaphor for her and that she might relate to those ducklings who are so tired but don’t want to stop playing. I tell it pretty straightforwardly ~ it can be very tempting to emphasize the moral of the story but you know, I think she gets it without any emphasis.

I wrote about my friend Carla’s blog a few months ago here.

Her ALS has progressed and she is no longer able to eat which means she has very little time left.

Carla posted her final blog entry a few days ago. I’ve read it a bunch of times (cried each and every time) and I wanted to share it with the small world of improv-a-mama readers.

Here it is.

Carla, I will miss you.

This post is part of the Moms’ 30 Minute Blog Challenge over at SteadyMom.

The days can be long and for me, dinnertime is often the longest part of day.

I think I’m hyperaware of all the ways that family dinner (meaning eating together and having conversations) are important and good for kids.  So I want to make that happen.  Yet there are many evenings that ImprovDad’s work prevents him from being home for dinner. So it is we two, LP and me, having dinner together.

Truly, I think I’ve always found meals challenging with LP. She’s  slooooooooow eater. So on most days of the week, when dinner rolls around, we’ve already had two meals together. And snacks.  And spent most of our time together. I have nothing to talk about.

Sure I try to get a little something going about a part of the day that each of us enjoyed and a part that was challenging.

But then….

I want to read. I want to eat in peace and quiet and read.  Since that isn’t going to happen and LP and I have many, many, many meals ahead of us, I’ve been looking for ways to improve our experience. (I imagine as she gets older and more verbal this will get easier.)

And tonight, finally it dawned on me. Why not tell stories during dinner?

So after we talked about our day (for about a minute and a half), I told LP stories about the Goat who Liked Spaghetti. This character was inspired by what was in front of me, my little girl who will try to eat pretty much anything she finds in nature who was eating spaghetti.  There were 4 or 5 simple stories. One was about the Goat who Liked Spaghetti picking flowers for her mama. Then they ate them for a snack.  Another was about when the Goat who Liked Spaghetti woke up in the night and got up to eat the leftover spaghetti.

LP was happy and I was happy.  We stayed engaged with each other and I did not get restless.  Dinner was eaten and we even had enough time before bedtime to go outside for one more round of gardening.

Yesterday was a rainy day and LP & I were feeling it here at the Improv-a-Mama house.

She was up early and had started bouncing from thing to thing.  Even before 9am I was feeling a little overwhelmed thinking of how to keep this little person engaged (and therefore not driving me up a wall) for more than 5 minutes.

She was into painting and what a great activity it turned out to be – 45 minutes!

I started her off (by request) with red & pink paint with paper and a sponge heart cutout to make valentines.  When she was losing interest, I brought out other colors of paint to add to the mix. Then pinto beans.  Then cornstarch. And finally, scraps of felt.

Clean up could rightly be called part of the activity. LP was pretty covered with paint (truly her own self remains her favorite canvas) and enjoyed watching the water in the basin turn colors as she swished her hands around in it.

Having her settle into something gave me the headspace (and time) I needed and I enjoyed watching her play with the materials expand and change. I offered the materials (or responded to her requests for more paint or cornstarch) and let her play with them.

Saying “yes” can be glorious, freeing and full of enjoyment.

At best, “yes, but” is an attempt to woo the other person with the promise of the joy of “yes.” At worst, it is a bait and switch. Yet even if you get what you want and the little people get what they want, the end result can be unsatisfying to both sides. Certainly as a parent, I find that I miss the joyful moment of “yes” because I am still in negotiation mode. I imagine on the little person end of thing it is frustrating to hear “yes” and then have it not really be the case.

So I am working to keep my “yes” a true “YES!” and any but-ing to be worked out before there’s a “yes.”

A small example:
At dinner, LP shouts out, “I want dessert!”

Now there are 2 things I want to have happen. One is I want her to eat more of her dinner. Two is that I want her to ask politely. To avoid the “yes, but” of “Yes you can have dessert after you eat your last two broccoli trees,” I skip the “yes” until I’m ready to actually say it.

So I say, “LP, I’d like you to finish your broccoli first.”

Which she does. And then shouts out, “I want dessert!”

And I say, “Please ask politely.”

Which she does, “May I have dessert please?”

And then I can say “yes!” with no strings attached.

To which she responds with a big smile and whispers to herself “Dessert! Desssertttt!”

More important than the words is a little bit of inner attitude shift on my part. In life in general, I want to say “yes” ~ to my family and friends, to work opportunities and so on. Yet I often probably say “yes, but…” because I’m not fully ready or able to say that “yes.” I’m curious to see if trying to shift my inner process to one of getting clear on what I need/want to make the “yes” happen will prevent that auto-”but” from showing up.

This post is part of the Moms’ 30-Minute Blog Challenge over at SteadyMom.