Life Lesson and Whip the Fly

These two topics go together, I promise!

Karianna was somewhat upset/sad about her playdate with her cousins this morning.  Nothing big happened, they just had a hard time fitting everything in that they wanted to do.  The girls were living in the land of "Are we still friends?"  when the playdate ended, hence Karianna's mood.  I sat down with her after everyone had left and talked with her about how to made playdates more successful-taking turns, asking her visitors what they wanted to do, etc.  I could tell she was really down about it-she loves her cousins and she takes things very personally/emotionally sometimes, even when they are not that big of a deal.  Add in any uncertainty about whether or not she lost a friend, and she is miserable.

I hate seeing Karianna so sad, partially because I believe she learned this trait from me.  I have a hard time letting things go sometimes, and Karianna has the same diffiulty.  While sitting on that couch, I told her she could choose to forget about this and be happy, or stay sad even though we came up with some solutions for the next play date.  Karianna, bless her heart, told me, "I want to be happy, but I don't know how."  Her eyes wer tearing up and that's where I saw myself-I have been there exactly, many times.  Karianna is my daughter.

I told Karianna one way to "throw the sad feelings in a bag and toss it in the garbage" is to doing something fun to distract her from feeling sad.  I gave her a ton of options, and she found a reason to NOT do every single one.  Finally I suggested a game of Whip the Fly.  She gave me a true teenager look of despair, so I decided to play anyway-plus, there was a huge fly in our living room, and I wanted to kill it.  So I picked up James' baby blanket and started whipping at the fly to kill it.  I was exhuberant.  Ninja style.  I was awesome-seriously. And I was so awesome, that Karianna started laughing, especially when I playfully started "whipping" the blanket at her and pretending she was the fly.  The other kids got into it, and pretty soon, I was chasig everyone around the house, flinging this blanket at them in between Chuck Norris roundhouse kicks (I told you I was good).  5 minutes of pure bliss and silliness, and just in case you were wondering, the fly did in fact die in the process.

With 4 kids giggling uncontrollably, I called for a time out-everyone froze.  I turned to Karianna, holding my whip-blanket at my side and softly asked her, "Did you throw it away?"  She said, "What?"  I asked again very softly, "Did you throw away the sad feelings?"  Karianna said, "What sad feelings?"

I smiled. I said, "You did it.  You threw it away and forgot about it-and you are happy." 

Now, from my own experiences, I knew Karianna could react to this realization in one of two ways.  She could retreat really quickly to her previous disposition and refuse to let go of the sad feelings.  Or, she could smile from ear to ear and relish the feeling of being happy-as well as request another round of Whip the Fly with her being the one to hold the whip-blanket. 

I'll let you guess which option she chose.

Choose to be Happy.  A life lesson for which I am grateful.