Today I found myself in an interesting position. I had the most amazing time taking my little girl to the local park, pushing her on the swing and going higher and higher, as she demanded of daddy, playing on the slide and stepping stones, until the rain cut our playtime short. As we are currently in the process of toilet training, accidents are inevitable and normal part of our lives, one of these happened on our way home as she was on her scooter next to me. She turns to me and says, “Daddy, I had an accident”. I say it’s OK of course and we rush back to get out of the rain. Once home we get all cleaned up and into fresh clothes, she then proceeds to have another accident and we repeat this process, followed by yet another accident less than five minutes later. I find myself getting a little bit frustrated and failing to get an answer from her as to why she hadn’t told me she needed the toilet after being great all day.
As I write this a couple of hours later and having had some time to reflect, I think to myself that trying to be more curious in these situations would be a much better way to approach it. Trying to understand why she might be doing these things rather than just asking the same thing again and again and expecting an answer that would satisfy me would be a much better approach.
So more of a message to myself more than anything else today, be more curious. Why might she act up in certain situations? What can I do to understand better? Definitely something for me to work on.