Mirrors and Magic

[mirrorsandmagic]

“Okay?”

I notice that when adults talk to children, they tend to end their sentences with “okay?”. To me, this means (because I’ve been there!) “you agree with me”. And since kids have yet to understand what they are agreeing to, I think this is is not helpful for the child to learn to be a critical thinker.

What other ways can we use to speak to them with?

[mirrorsandmagic]

Christmas boundaries

Just a few days more and Christmas Day 2019 will be here. I was sitting at a coffee shop waiting for a friend yesterday and I realized that, given a year and a half, I’ve come a long way.

Let me backtrack a bit.

Prior to last year’s Christmas holiday, I’ve come to hate the season. It was a steady growing hate, year per year. I used to be so sad when I’d look back to see how much I had come to dislike a holiday that I used to look forward to every single year in my youth. What happened?

And I finally understood it last year, as Christmas 2018 came and gone. And my greatest learning for 2018 was —

BOUNDARIES

And my gosh, the freedom I had felt — it was amazing. (How funny to say that by putting boundaries, I felt free!)

Two major things I put boundaries on:

Telling my husband that I am no longer buying presents for people I didn’t want to give gifts to in the first place

Deciding what I want to spend my time on

Doing these two things has turned Christmas around for me...and our relationship.