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I am starting to like my children again.

For awhile there, it was getting pretty hard.  There was so much whinning, crying and fighting going on, I thought for sure that I was going to have to sell them both on eBay.  But things are getting better, or maybe I should say, I am getting better.

Why, you ask, would I need to be better when it is my children who have been in need of improvement?  Well, it is because I have realized that there is a direct connection between my mood and my children's. 

Because of our move recently (just across town, but still a move) I had been tired and stressed for several weeks.  And during those weeks, my children were a nightmare--fighting over everything, sharing nothing, and crying at a drop of a hat.  Obviously, it didn't help that they were living in total chaos, driving back and forth between the two houses, packing up a load and dropping it off.  But now we are settled--in more ways than one--and it's showing through my children's behavior. 

Now that I have come to this realization, I am going to pay much closer attention to my moods.  When I'm stressed, I usually develop a short fuse.  And when I get angry and my temper flares up, my children react negatively with whinning and crying.  The whinning and crying make my temper shorter.  And on and on. 

See the adverse pattern here?

So, for now the stress has left my body and I've found myself smiling again.  And of course now that I am more relaxed, so are my children.  It's amazing how that works!  Why didn't I figure this out sooner?  It would have saved us all a lot of time in time-out.

Here it is in a nutshell.  When I'm calm, they're calm.  When I'm relaxed, they're relaxed.  When I'm happy, well as the saying goes, everybody's happy!