One of my fondest memories of childhood is kneeling on my dad’s kitchen floor alongside my closest cousin, face down into a bowl of cereal that I was eating directly with my mouth, doggy-style.
My cousin, one year older than I (and my roommate for many weeks every summer as we grew up), was a dog lover and much better at pretend play than I was. She boldly asked my stepmom if we could move our bowls from the breakfast table where we were eating like normal(ish) kids down to the floor, you know, to be dogs. “Why not?” my stepmom must have said.
And really, “Why not?”
It was so much fun for us and really didn’t impact her negatively.
I was reminded of this memory when I came across the below post from the Feeleez blog.
What if we said YES even when our gut response was NO? What if we used all of our empathetic powers to imagine what the other person was feeling? Would we say YES more often? If you really tried on the idea of what it would feel like to squish into warm, home-made play doh with your bare feet while standing on the kitchen table would you still say NO to the kid’s request? If you imagined that squishy goodness squeezing between your toes in a delightful, cozy, embrace would you still say NO?
Probably not.
Thus, my son wore protective eye goggles to preschool this morning. I mean, why not?
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
What a great post! I think saying yes more than no would be good for my well-being too. At the end of the day, saying no all the time is very hard on me emotionally.
Love it! It’s so much fun for kids when they get to do things like this – and pretty cathartic for parents who say “yes” to themselves to get involved. I bet those play-dough shoes feel pretty awesome!
There was a Harvard study that found that all children were geniuses across multiple intelligence scales up until age four at which point it declines until age 20. At 20, only two percent still geniuses. Maybe a piece of the intellectual decline is how we stifle creativity and learning by saying no so often.
I couldn’t agree more. A couple of years back I watched a friend let her baby play on the kitchen floor in a cornstarch/water soup wearing nothing but a diaper I thought to myself, “I want to be that mom.”
My 5-month old splashes around in the bath tub every night and there is water everywhere… it makes me smile every time.