Take a deep breath

It was one of those evenings I'm sure all parents have...and it was my turn yesterday. My 5-year old son was not having any of it...I mean, he wasn't listening to me when I said it was time to have a bath (for the tenth time). He wanted to watch another episode of Animal Planet and then go have a bath. He had already watched enough, according to me, and it was definitely time to turn it off. We were going back and forth when I just had it and began to fume, literally fume and about to scream when my son came close to me and said "mommy, take a deep breath." And so I did - and he watched me calm down the way we spoke about earlier that morning.

While walking to school that same morning, I was telling my son what I would be teaching the 12-year old autistic boy I work with every morning at his school. The topic for the week was anger and on that day, we were going to talk about how to calm down when we get angry. So I told him about some ways to do this...count to 10, talk to a friend, among others...and of course, take a deep breath. After listening to his ideas of how to calm down, including have some ice cream, we got to school, I dropped him to his class and gave him a big wet kiss on the lips.

That evening, my son reminded me to practice what I preach. Here's to another lesson from my kid...