Yesterday I decided to say “yes” to pretty much everything. I
know, I know, women are supposed to say no now – you read about saying no all
the time. Not overcommitting is the thing to do! I feel like you need the
backstory to understand this one. We were spending Thursday night at a hotel
with a water park and I had the kids to myself on a rare Friday off from
school. On Thursday night I was wiped out – I had gotten up at 4:30 a.m. to
workout, worked all day, plus we had gone swimming at the hotel – and I didn’t
have the energy to make the cocoa and popcorn I had promised the kids before
bed. “In the morning you can have it,” I said before I conked out for the
night. And now it was morning and they wanted popcorn and cocoa for breakfast. My
first reaction was an inward sigh because kids only remember the things you
wish they hadn’t. They can’t remember to put their shoes on every day, (something
that still amazes me – it’s SHOES!) but they remember I had said we’d eat junk
food for breakfast. But then my second reaction was “Why not? What IS the big
deal about popcorn and cocoa (and Oreos) for breakfast? We don’t do it every
day and giving them a whole day to burn that energy is better than giving it to
them before bedtime.” So I said “Yes.” The kids couldn’t believe it and I had
won some points in their book.
Then I thought, why not say yes to everything today? I had
to mix in errands with the fun of the day so maybe it would make the day go
smoother if I did. And lo and behold, the day went pretty well. I did have to
shoot down a few ideas such as, after complaining for 45 minutes that they are
starving for lunch I said no to the arcade so that I could feed them before
they turned on me. I might have been motivated by self-preservation on that
one. Hungry boys are a very dangerous thing. I want to be a hero but I don't want to be eaten in the process.
I said yes to pop at Costco, yes to an ice cream cone before
dinner, yes to the pumpkin at the grocery store (the bigger the better!), yes
to volleyball in the pool, yes to more TV, yes to the bounce house at Night
Eyes, and yes to bedtime stories. Again, there were a few nos sprinkled in, but
the majority of the day was full of yeses.
And it felt good. Did the kids get away with murder? Nope.
Are they spoiled? Nope. Was the day perfect? Nope. I’ll admit, at the end of
the day, Rocco was still complaining that he doesn’t get EVERYTHING he wants
and I was still exhausted. But the day felt better on the whole and I felt
better. And let’s be honest, I care a lot about how I feel.
See, too often I just wear out. By 6 p.m. I’m ready to hang
it up, even though there’s still a full 3 more hours of going-going-going to
do. And when I’m tired, I revert to saying “no” before I’ve even listened to
the request. One day of more yeses than nos didn’t make me less tired, but it
didn’t make me more tired either. And it did make me feel like a pretty cool
mom for once.
(Now for the sappy Hallmark wrap up.) Will I remember this parenting lesson? Hopefully. It takes a
conscious effort to stop and think about the ROI on a yes versus a no. With the
number of requests coming in, I tend to revert to hair trigger decisions. But
setting an intention at the start of the day to say yes more than no helps. Will
this make me the world’s best mom? No - I still don’t have a formal Craft Night
on the weekly rotation and so someone else will hold that title. Will my kids
still get mad at me? Oh that’s a definite yes for sure. Yet, the next time they
are mad at me for making them brush their teeth, I’ll just remind them that
popcorn, cocoa and Oreos for breakfast comes at a price. I think the scales
will still tip in my favor. Winning!
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