Spinning back in time and I am observing me in the heat of arsenic hour when my kids were 2 and 3 years old.
They were whinging, clinging, the house was a mess, dishes everywhere, dinner trying to be cooked, I’m tired. I don’t want to be dealing with any of this. It’s been a long day and I’m hanging for my husband to come home to help take the load off.
Cue the telephone call from hubby.
“I’m going to be late.” Those 5 dreaded words that no worn out stay-at-home parent wants to hear when they are so desperately needing a break.
“Oh, whatever then!” was my unappreciative, rude and short reply before I hung up in disgust, acting like he meant to be late from work. Like he didn’t give a damn about what I was going through. Doesn’t he know that I need help over here?!!!
Fast forward an hour or so and hubby walked through the door to a pissed off wife, a grunt as I handed over a child to be washed and as I continued to do the relentless amount of chores needing to be done.
What must it have been like to live with me back then? A nightmare! And my husband is not afraid to tell me so.
So today, I want you to think about what you are like to live with? If you work from home, or perhaps go to work during the day and at the end of the day you are tired, what is it like for the other people in your family to have to deal with you?
I want you to think about this because quite often, we look to others to blame them for how they are treating us and what they are doing to make us unhappy. But how often do we turn those pointed fingers back around to ourselves and see the part that we play in our relationships?
What if, today when you got home, or your partner gets home, you greet them with a smile, a ‘how was your day’, a “I really missed you today” and a warmth that serves to mix things up a bit.
Make an effort and you might just find that those ‘feral’ times of the day, don’t have to be so feral.
Taking Responsibility,
Jackie