Happiness

If my kid turns you to a puddle of mush you're not the only one.  I haven't read the comments to J yet but I will when she's through with school tomorrow.  She will be thrilled.  I totally meant to do it after school today.  Yes, she did school today.  Transitions are still difficult for her so we decided in therapy to go 7 days a week for a little bit to see if it would help her.  We don't do full school days on the weekends but enough that we stay in the groove.

 Diana wrote a great post yesterday but this paragraph really hit me like a ton of bricks.  "All that crazy crap they pull isn’t about the purposely being naughty or hateful or manipulative. It is about them t trying to survive in a world they believe is out to get them. Given that perspective, what they’re doing IS perfectly logical and rational to them. Does it really make sense to punish them for that? Not really. Doing so will only increase their already off the charts fear, stress, and cortisol levels."

Do you know how long it took me to get that?  Like 3 forevers.  Seriously probably about 3.5 years.  I am so slow sometimes and it's so easy to see all the behaviors and not see what is driving it.  The really sad thing is that I probably wasn't able to internalize it until J was able to verbalize life as she saw it.  I am so hoping that she will go back to posting on her blog again.  She gets so frustrated because she has a processing disorder where she has trouble getting the thoughts from her brain to the computer keys (or pencil).  But...when she is able to express her thoughts she grows so much emotionally.  Then when she gets positive affirmations from y'all her self-esteem gets a huge boost.

I watched Op rah this week (gasp) with Goldie H awn and the topic was happiness.  They stressed many things that are great for happiness.  O challenged people to meditate for 1 minute every day for 10 days.  I've never included J in my meditations but after seeing this program I decided to give it a go.  It couldn't hurt. We sat in the strong sitting position, facing each other, with a birthday candle lit for a focus point in between us.  We did it until the candle burned about 1/4 of the way down (about 3 minutes). It was very cool.  I wrote J's meditation on a piece of paper and gave it to her.  She memorized it but kept it laying on the floor in front of her in case she forgot. Hers was "peace" (silently) on the inhale and "love" on the exhale.  Mine was (because I'm always feeling like there isn't enough of me to go around to remember to take care of me), "I'm here for me." on inhale and "I'm here for you" on exhale.  A couple of times I had to remind her to breathe from her "tummy" but she really did great.

Practicing deep breathing is really good for our kids.  It's incredibly calming and soothing for both of us.  That is when I don't get caught up in life and actually remember to do it.