Welcome to Week 3 of the 100 Acts of Kindness Challenge! This week we were challenged by Deborah at Teach Preschool to "share a heartprint."
Today we are excited to share Pragmatic Mom's post Easy Everyday Acts of Kindness. She shares 10 easy acts of kindness that we can do along with 48 random acts of kindness that she did as she celebrated her birthday this year.
Click on the image below to read Pragmatic Mom's post
We are always looking for new and easy ways to show kindness at our house. This week has been a challenging one as my toddler has decided to drop her nap and my son has been struggling to go to bed each night because of a canker sore. I am finding myself completely underslept. Last night I think I was up every two hours with my five year old... NOT my newborn.
What do you do on days when you wish you could have a reset button and start over?
Our Facebook friends shared several ways that they reset after a bad start to the day... or in our case, a day that never ends... because it goes all through the night too! Do you have any tips?
Here's what I have done this week so far when I've been at my wits end...
1. Cuddle up with my kids and tell them silly stories from when I was a little girl.
2. Scrap our plans and go to the park instead. Fresh air and running errands always makes things better.
3. Hug and hug... and hug my kids and cry. Hugging is so much better than hitting when you are angry. I don't spank my kids, but there have been moments in anger when I have wanted to. Hugging them and telling them I love them (even when I am frustrated with them) makes me choose to be kind and not angry.
4. Take a Mom Time Out to the bathroom. Removing myself from a frustrating situation with my older kids definitely made me less likely to yell and helped me calm down so that I wouldn't say anything unkind to my kids.
5. Read our favorite books and do simple activities like play with playdough and color.
6. Work together to do something kind for someone else. On Monday night (after a pretty rough day), we wrote kind notes to friends and drew pictures. Working together and talking about ways that our friends help us made us feel so happy!
7. Take a break! Sometimes the kindest thing I can do for my kids is hire a babysitter and get out of the house. Last night I went to a kindergarten info night without my kids and sat by a friend and got to chat. It wasn't anything special, but it was still a break and I needed it! Sometimes being kind to ourselves benefits our kids as well!
How do you demonstrate kindness when you are at your wits end as a parent?
If you are just joining us, head to our 100 Acts of Kindness project 2013 landing page to catch up on our challenge. We are on week 3 and we are having so much fun finding little ways to be more kind and teach our kids about kindness!
Also, I'm excited to be sharing a little coupon with you this week from Method... along with some fun cleaning tips. My post will be shared later this week, but in the meantime you can save $1 off your Method purchase by clicking on the image below and using the coupon code mentioned when you check out.
Disclaimer: This post contains sponsored links.
I definitely do the "Mom Time Out" thing. If I can't walk away, I will look up, close my eyes, and take a deep breath. That is just enough to keep me from losing my cool.
This is so helpful for me, if only to know that being at wits end as a parent is OK! I love how you redirect yourself as well as your children. 🙂