For the Thanksgiving holiday, my son Roy and his family are visiting. Having 3 children from 10 months to 5 and a half years old in the house for a couple of days is hectic, fascinating, energizing, consuming, and exhausting.
How they act is tightly coupled with how they feel right now - tired, hungry, well-rested, jealous, afraid - and nothing seems to last for very long. Three children cycling somewhat independently through various emotional states creates a lot of different combinations.
The energy qualities and level in the house change dramatically. The cats are very tuned into this, and respond by finding the quietest spots to hang out while the craziness swirls around. To help them out, we turned one room into a safe zone where they could spend the day. When the kids go to bed and things quiet down at night, they venture back out and reclaim their normal territory.
While the cats' response is to escape, our response is active engagement. This makes a day with the visiting kids almost entirely different from our normal life. It helps to simply put aside expectations about how the day will go and what may be accomplished, and just flow along with what happens.
Today, the two older children were up before their parents, so the day began with getting them an early breakfast of fruit. There was more time in the music room, which seems at some point to lead to conflict over them wanting to play the same instrument, a short drive to a park for fresh air and activity, a couple of meals, and some evening games. Then more fruit, before a little bedtime battling over stuffed animals.
The thing I enjoy most about the kids is seeing how they learn; how they put what they already know together with new experiences.
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