I used to believe that my little man was so sweet, well mannered and well behaved. He would sit nicely. Hew would listen. He would smile at the camera when he was asked. He was a gentle, silly little soul.
And now we have this....
He is like a hurricane at times. I absolutely adore my little hurricane. Even if he is a crazy, rowdy, rambunctious 4 year old full of energy and a little bit feisty. We often have to remind him to use his listening ears and I feel like I am using his full name A LOT these days. Very rarely does he just walk. He can often be found running! There are days that we get home and I let him out the slider to play in the backyard. It is fenced in so I know that he is safe to run and run and run....and that is exactly what he does.
Yesterday at preschool, Gus got an "uh oh" face. (They get smiley faces until they misbehave and then the card gets flipped to an "uh oh" face.) As educators, my husband and I both feel strongly that our children should behave in school. You can imagine how my heart broke thinking about how he misbehaved in school. Turns out he, and two other students, were tackling kids! When I got to thinking about it, I realized that maybe Gus has been around football practice too much!!
Gus can be quite a handful at times. After yesterday's event, I started reflecting back on the past two years and the variety of events we have been at where I could have used my running shoes to chase after Gus. I thought about the variety of comments others have made about my little hurricane. The comments this past summer have started to bother me and the incident yesterday was the final straw. I need to do something so I decided to start doing some research. Over the course of the past 24 hours, I have read a bunch of articles, looked back in my files from my master's degree program in counseling and cried.
I found a variety of great activities to help keep my little hurricane occupied. I found a lot of "experts" who talked about discipline. And of course, the ever present issue of attention deficit disorders and medicating children. The best resource I found was on THIS BLOG. (It is a great post and I strongly recommend it to anyone who has a high energy child in their life. It is also good for those of you that have calm, well mannered children so that you can see why some of us are so crazy!) As I read through the post, the tears flowed. It sounded just like my life! It was like she was writing about my little hurricane. And then she said something that hit straight to my core. "It was in that moment I realized, he is not a bad kid, he is just an energetic one." I needed to hear that! My Gus-Gus is NOT a bad kid. He is just very energetic.
This mom also decided how to approach her son and his actions. "I learned to embrace this energy of his and try to work with it rather than fight it." From the moment I read that line, I knew that I needed to find a different approach or I would drive myself insane. I am going to "tackle" Gus' energy in a different way and hopefully get some better results. So next time you see me chasing after my little hurricane, please remember (and remind me, too!!) that it is a process and that learning to embrace this little boy and all of his energy will pay off in the long run!
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