Oh these kids are so special to me! One thing that I hope to leave them with is a strong emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence has five components: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills. I wanted to share some stories of each of the kids demonstrating various parts of emotional intelligence!
Dempsey is VERY attuned to other people and their emotions. She had a friend spend the night up at the grandparents house awhile back. She was worried that her friend might feel sad at night because it was her first night at the grandparents house and she was away from her parents. She asked grandpa to play Eye Spy with them for awhile until they were tired. She figured that might help her friend be more comfortable.
On numerous occasions when we are watching a show.. Dempsey says things to me regarding the people how they might be feeling. One example is we are watching a Disney IRL Zoo documentary. This guy is in charge of these turtles that he has been raising. They are about to go release the turtles in the wild. Dempsey says, "Mom-he looks a bit sad. I bet he feels sad that they are letting the turtles go."
The other day Dempsey told me,"Mom-you are so pretty. You have such a great fashion sense. Do other people tell you that all the time?"
She told me a story from her birthday party about a friend that was wearing one of her swimsuits. Another friend commented on how she should covered up her stomach. Dempsey and other friends stood up and said to her friend "You do not need to cover up. You do you!" They let the friend know that made the comment that this was not ok. (THIS BROUGHT me so much joy. I grew up very self-aware of my body, and still have lingering thoughts that I battle. I want my daughter to know that SHE IS BEAUTIFUL no matter her size. I want her to work out because she likes to be strong, not because she needs to be a certain weight. THIS story brought me so much hope because I know that the social pressure is out there and I want her to have a strong foundation as the expectations of teenager world looms ahead).
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Ryk has been growing exponentially in his self-awareness. He is able to not only identify what he is feeling, he is now getting better at sharing this with the family. His line is sometimes, "Hey Dempsey, could you please turn down your music. I'm tired and I'm feeling sensitive to sound and I want to protect my nervous system." Not only did he identify his emotion, he shared this, he asked for what he needed and he explained why. I FREAKIN started learning this last year!!!!!!!!!!
One evening where my patience was running low, I was not doing a good job of listening to Ryker. He stopped me in my tracks by saying, "Mom, I feel like you aren't even listening to what I need right now." OOPHHH. It poked at the part of me that wants to be a good mom, and is devastated if I'm not being a good mom. BUT I knew how important it was that he felt comfortable sharing what his truth was with me. I stopped from going into a shame cycle and let him know how proud I was of him for sharing. I validated him by telling him he was right. And then I did better. **** HOW beautiful that he knows what he deserves and he trusts me enough and himself enough to share this with me?
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This story of AJ might be one of my favorite AJ stories in the entire world. A few weeks ago we were at a robotics tournament. AJ's team was KILLING it. They were climbing the ranks, and got picked in the first alliance. Ryk's team was experiencing quite the opposite. Although, his team had beat AJ's team in the qualification rounds-I think that it might have been their only win. When they were picking alliances I watched towards the end. It's pretty heartbreaking because only a certain amount of teams get into the single elimination brackets. As the last team was picking their alliance, I watched Ryk's hopeful face turned to complete disappointment and he immediately went running back to his robot to clean up. When I got to the gym, I saw AJ over with Ryker. Instead of AJ being with his alliance partner, planning out how they were going to dominate and eventually win the tourney, he was over with Ryker. He was talking to him about how he could maybe still get into state. In the photo he was looking up Ryker's skill score to see if he could make it in. He was telling him that it was ok, and that this was all part of it. MY MOMMA heart grew 5x watching this interaction. THIS is the stuff that I live for. I KNOW that I won't be around for everyone....and I want so badly for my kids to love and support each other. I watched it in action. When I went over to take over from AJ so he could join his team, Ryk hugged me. We went outside. I asked how he was feeling and he said..."Well, I'm just really happy for AJ, but I feel sad for our team."
Mic drop.
I feel so damn grateful to be a momma. I never thought being a momma was in the cards for me, but it was. THIS is what it's all about. Raising some beautiful, amazing humans.
Love,
Momma
