Does your mood affect those around you?
We all know that if we have a bad morning – school transport is late, can’t find that letter you signed last night, kids decide to practice reverse burlesque (you know the one, one leg in, pause and chat, one leg in, pause and chat, gaze around the room, check out iPad, put one arm in, find something of interest on iPad, pause, and so on) – well when your day starts like this, often it doesn’t seem to get any better.
However, I have found if I have a bad morning, if I then grab a notebook and write a little rant (or a really extensive one if it’s been particularly bad), I feel better once it is all out of my head. And the nice thing about writing it down is I can’t press “send” or “publish” or “Share” by mistake! No one gets to see it but me. I get to use all the naughty words and exclamation marks I like!!!!!
I know that if I have a bad day, my kids tend to have a bad day and vice versa.
So does the mood you are in influence the mood your kids have?
What about the moods in your home?
Have you even thought about it? It took someone pointing it out to me to realise what an impact I have on my kids and how much happier I am when they are happy.
This week, have a go at our little colouring chart – think mindfulness, think calm, think an excuse to buy more colouring pencils.
The idea is simple.
Set a code for your mood. So angry could be black, happy could be yellow, envious could be green, guilty could be red, etc.
Each day colour in the chart to show how your day went and then complete the others for your partner, kids and hey, let’s include the dog too. If our dog has his manic half hour where he runs from room to room, we all end up laughing so his input is just as valuable (plus the kids will enjoy choosing colours for his day).
Let us know how you get on, we’d love to hear if it helps in any way. Sometimes just being conscious of the mood we were in when we think about the day we had helps us to understand why it went so badly or well.
Mum to three great kids, each with a different SEN.
Transplanted from the NW to the SE.
Co-founder and Director of Bringing Us Together
