It was a work-from-home day, and I was alone with my two toddlers – Truett was three years old, and Kirsten, two years. While I took a long phone call in the living room, they played in the kitchen nearby, where my laptop was. I kept gesturing for them to keep it down.
But at their tender ages, they couldn’t take the hint. Then suddenly, I heard a crash.
I walked into the kitchen to find my laptop on the floor, its screen cracked clean across.
Money was tight then, and I immediately knew that forking out a few hundred dollars just to repair my laptop was something we couldn’t afford. I felt panic, then anger, and then both at once.
And so I yelled. Really yelled. I don’t think I ever had before.
I still remember the looks on their faces. It was the mixture of devastation and terror that only very young children can show – the kind that tells you they don’t fully understand what they did wrong, only that the person they love most in the world is furious with them.
I picked them up, held them close and apologised properly, with tears and no qualification.
It was not to teach them forgiveness, but to be accountable for what I had just done. Losing my temper like that is not who I want to be, or what I want to model. I haven’t done it since.
But I’ve never forgotten it. I don’t think I’m supposed to.
CHILDREN WILL NOTICE EVERYTHING
Our five children are now aged 10 to 18. Between my husband and I, we have accumulated many years of parenting experience, and with it, a running catalogue of mistakes we’ve made – in parenting and in life.
Like any other parents, we often talk to our kids about right and wrong. But after nearly two decades of raising kids, I’ve come to believe that what they observe us doing is a much more influential teacher.
