If You Can't Beat 'em, Join 'em

Ayden was in a very enthusiastic mood all. day. long. You'd think this would be a wonderful thing, and it most certainly is. The only problem is that when he is in this kind of mood, he is excitedly and LOUDLY jabbering, singing and calling for me non-stop. Crying or whining would have definitely been worse but, to your subconscious, noise is noise. You know those moments when all of the sudden a loud fan or other form of background noise turns off and you instantly feel relief. You didn't even realize the noise was bothering you until it was gone and you were able to breathe again. That happened today when Ayden finally gave his voice a brief break. I didn't even realize how much the noise was bothering me until it stopped.  Even if it was only for a minute...

This would happen to me as a teacher too. We were required to have musical instruments available at all times during free play and I bet you can imagine the beautiful "music" 3 and 4 year olds can make with symbols, maracas, drums, castanets and tambourines. I'd be trying to work on IEPs, collecting assessments, observing or screening students when a group would decide to form a band. I'd be focused on the task at hand and the noise would slowly creep into my subconscious and start stressing me out. My first instinct would be to collect the instruments and help them find quieter activities. But, that wouldn't fit into the "available at all times" rule and also, what fun would that have been?  Instead, I adopted a,"If you can't beat 'em, join 'em mentality in those moments.  When the kids migrated over to the instruments, I'd trade my clipboard for an instrument of my own and the instant I became a part of the noise making it stopped stressing me out and became so much fun! I quite possibly have the best memories from those moments.

Fast forward to today, I am working on my to do's and Ayden is happily playing while jabbering constantly at the TOP of his lungs. Once I realized how I was feeling about it, I stopped what I was doing, got down and joined him. We sang, made animal noises, I started hearing his jabbering as the amazingly cute thing that it really is. Joining him, becoming present in his world, removed any built up tension from the "noise" just as well as silence would have and it was MUCH more fun for the both of us. 

I suppose for mothers of boys, the "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" mentality is just as important for survival as it is for a preschool teacher!  I am seeing some remarkable parallels these days as he is getting older.

"CHOO CHOO!!!!!!!" 

What is your survival mode mentality?  Do you ever have days where you just have to drop everything and just join 'em?

~Sarah