People always told me that when you have kids your perspective on the world changes. I never believed them, until my son arrived. Watching him explore the world and learn how it works has opened my eyes to a way of being that many adults, including myself, have forgotten about.
All of his actions are performed with a wide eyed enthusiasm. He’s willing to give anything a try at least once because he hasn’t learnt to hate on things yet.
He doesn’t take no for an answer either. He’s spent the last few weeks learning to walk, and if you’ve watched someone learn to walk then you’ll know it involves a lot of falling over, and my son’s no exception, but most of time he just picks himself and tries again. He doesn’t associate falling as failure, he just sees it as part of the process.
Nor does he let sickness stop him, and this being his first winter at daycare, he’s been sick a lot, and therefore so have I; he just loves sharing. Most of the sickness has taken the form of colds, with blocked noses and sore throats, the severity of which I can attest to several days later. While I will get a little depressed at the fact that I’m sick, again, he just powers through and gets on with his day of playing and learning. He doesn’t let a sore throat stop him from smiling. Sure, he’s not his usual vibrant self, but he doesn’t know that being sick is supposed to stop him from doing stuff.
It doesn’t take him long to recover either, usually a day or two, which is much faster than me, because I’ve spent up to a week getting back to normal. The cynics out there will say he recovers faster because he’s younger and his body heals faster. Maybe that’s true, but I tried something this week when I got the latest round of sore throats and snotty noses, I tried being positive.
As soon as I got the sore throat I occupied my mind with happy thoughts. I got to bed a little earlier than normal and thought of all the things that had made me smile that day. I didn’t have a great nights sleep as I woke many times with a throat that felt like I’d swallowed a thousand razor blades. Each time I awoke I forced myself to smile and think of something happy as I drifted back to sleep. And you know what, in the morning I felt pretty good, having got through the worst of it. My recovery wasn’t as fast as my son because I didn’t manage to keep up that positive mindset throughout the day. There were parts where I let myself be sad and unhappy because that’s what I’ve taught myself to be when I get sick, but based on my recovery speeds for all the other colds I’ve had this winter I reckon I’m a day ahead, and that’s a pretty good start.
The next time I get a cold I’m going to work on staying positive and I’m going to try and get my recovery speed to match my sons. I’m also going to become a role model for him as he gets older and becomes more aware of the world around him. I’m going to show him that he has a choice. He can either get downhearted when he gets sick and suffer through it, or he can be positive and get on with life.