I was woken up this morning by my son with one of those dreaded phases. “Mom, I was trying to get oatmeal and it spilled.”
Usually this would make me get up to investigate. I cannot count the number of times I’ve been woken up to clean something or deal with some other situation that no one else wanted to handle. My half-awake response instead, “So, get a dust pan and clean it up.”
Oh, it gets better. “But it’s more than will fit on the dust pan.”
Yep. We buy those giant containers of oatmeal. Normally the kids opt for the packets. But not this morning. My 6-year-old son decided to make oatmeal for all of us for breakfast. And apparently dropped the previously full container all over the floor.
In this situation, I could have gotten angry. That wouldn’t have canceled out the mess and it wouldn’t have made either of us feel any better about it. I considered it anyway, but instead I took a deep breath. I didn’t stress. I didn’t yell. I didn’t let it bother me. I concluded it wasn’t even my job to clean it up. Oatmeal is not that awful of a thing to spill. It’s not sticky, it’s not expensive, and it isn’t going anywhere or doing any damage if the cleanup is a bit tardy.
I calmly tried again. “It might take more than one trip with the dust pan.”
Those were my brilliant words of wisdom! I’m not sure what he was waiting for. Did he want me to say that if he spilled that much, we were going to gather it up and eat it off the floor anyway? Doubtful. Did he want me to step in and do the work for him? Maybe. But exceedingly, he just needed to confess and was just looking for confirmation as to how to move forward.
Confession over and with my very vague advice in mind, he went back to the kitchen and cleaned it up. There was absolutely no drama.
I’m not always so great at letting these moments roll off my back, but that was undoubtedly the best thing I could have done. His cleanup job was almost impressive. For the few pieces he missed, and for the ones that missed the trash can, I plugged in the vacuum for him and he vacuumed those suckers right up.
So, why am I HAPPY that he made a mess? Because he was getting breakfast for himself. I allow my kids a good bit of freedom and the responsibility that comes with it. Most times that freedom results in them getting things done without me. Seriously, my days of getting up every morning to feed everyone breakfast are gloriously over. Some days, however, freedom results in giant messes. That’s okay. It means my kids are learning. They are becoming independent and they are learning to take care of the good and the bad for themselves. If they never made messes or mistakes, it would mean that they weren’t trying new things or that they weren’t trying to do anything for themselves. Those are both unacceptable in my book.
Messes mean they are growing up. And that does make me sad, but for entirely different reasons…
