Perspective

La La La LOOOOO! This is what I heard the other day in Super Target. My daughter Hermione and I were shopping in preparation for the grandparents’ arrival. La la la LOOOOO! There it was again! As we turned into the bread aisle, we saw him – not even two, riding in the shopping cart, being pushed along by his tired mother. I giggled softly to Hermione, and we moved on.

We made it to the next aisle, and then I heard it again. La la la LOOOOO! “It’s that kiddo again, ha!” I said. Then a few more aisles down, we again passed the little guy with his mother. She now appeared annoyed as well as tired. La la la LOOOOO! It was then that I realized he’d been doing this for some time. This wasn’t just a funny moment in Target; he liked LaLooing. He liked it a lot.

I thought it was cute, but to his mother, it might not have been so funny. It was hard to tell, as she was calm and quiet, but if it had been me, I would have had enough. We heard her trying various parenting tactics to get him to stop his LaLooing, but all failed. In fact, the more she tried to get him to stop, the more he kept going, and so she settled wisely on the ignore plan. It might have been driving her crazy, or maybe she just wasn’t hearing it at all anymore, but as a mother it is hard to keep one’s perspective with toddlers. All of us who have cared for children, parents or not, have found ourselves in the mental state of the tired mother. The “I’m losing my mind, shut-up or I’m going to smack you” state. Even the best parents, although they may not smack the kids, will occasionally lose it and scream ranting nonsense at them. Kids are resilient. They just bounce back. Sometimes they even find the ranting amusing. “Uh oh, mom’s losing it, ha ha. We’d better go outside.”

Since I started teaching yoga, I have frequently heard mothers come out of Shavasana and make a joke to the affect of, “Wow, I feel like I might not have to yell at my kids today!” And then another woman will interject sarcastically, “Yeah, I wonder how long that will last?” We have a great class, feel all relaxed and centered, and then within a few hours we’re on the battle lines again. How do we stay in that calm place we found on the mat when dealing with family life? I’m not going to lie on my blog and say I never yell at my kids anymore. I can say truthfully that I yell a lot less since I started doing yoga and meditating. In the end, I like to joke, Samadhi in the ashram is easy compared to the reality of the mini-van life.

I have two teenage daughters, so watching the little boy LaLooing was amusing, and I thought, hey that’s not as bad as all this teen stuff I’m attempting to handle. She was probably watching me thinking, wow, her kids know how to use the bathroom on their own and brush their own teeth, heaven! Maybe if we’d just switched places for 2 hours, we could have each appreciated each of our own situations better.

Trying to keep my perspective, while dealing with my children, has always been and continues to be a daily challenge. It’s especially hard when summer hits and we are together all the time. When I feel anger or frustration bubbling up, I try to remove myself from the situation, even if only for a few minutes. In a past blog post about the holidays, I recommended going and hiding in the bathroom to get away from the relatives when about to “lose it”. I’ve been doing this for years and have found it extremely effective – except when the kids were really little, and they’d follow me into the bathroom. (I’m glad those days are over.) I got a real kick out of one of the chapters in Anne Lamont’s book, Traveling Mercies, entitled, “God is in the Bathroom.” Why? Because there is nothing to do in there but sit and breathe! Anne’s point was that in our busy modern lives, it’s often one of the only places people sit and relax, get quiet and maybe connect with their breath.

In Super Target, hiding in the bathroom is obviously not an option. A mother is left to attempt to find the breath while not reacting to the offending child. Some days this can seem nearly impossible. By the time Hermoine and I got back into the frozen section, the little boy had NOT stopped LaLooing, and I still thought it was hilarious. He was going at it with such determination and gusto. The mother kept catching my glances, and I wondered if she was starting to lose it or if she was just worried he was annoying other people. I was afraid to say anything, as it obviously wasn’t as funny to her, but I tried this, “Well, I guess LaLooing is better than crying….” She took a big breath, and I saw her shoulders relax, and I heard a dejected “yeah, I guess your right.” Silence. LA LA LA LA LOOOOOO!

Since I thought the LaLooing was fun, I decided to try it out myself. As we made our way to the front of Target to check out, I kept LaLooing randomly to the distress of my teenager.

“Mooooom!! Stop it”

“La la la LOOOO!”

“Seriously mom. You are not 2 years old. Stop it!”

“La la la LOOOOO!”

“For God sakes mom, people are staring at us!”

“La la la LOO… OUCH!” She smacked me upside the head.

(Try it right now. Just bust out really loudly with a La la la loo. You’ll feel better).

When we settle into the places between the breaths, the divine bubbles up and begins to wash the anger away. No big time commitment or fancy cushion needed.