As I sat at the kitchen table this evening after believing that my son was coping really well at his first couple of weeks at school and making lots of friends, he informs me this evening that he has sat by himself at lunchtime and no one wanted to play with him.  He said that he tried to play with him but they told him to go away.

Suddenly I was sucked into the vortex of time, flooded with memories of this very thing happening throughout my primary school life and devastated that he was having to experience this.

This was my first reality check that my little baby was growing up and I could no longer control how his life unfolded.  I could no longer protect him from the harsh realities of life.  Even as I write this, I can feel tears welling up in my eyes at the thought of him being hurt by the cruelty of other kids.

However, I am truly blessed to know the information that I now do after going through the struggles that I did with my depression and gaining a realistic view of life, and on being a parenting, so that I can objectively get some perspective on this situation.

You see as much as we would like for our children to live happy lives and have nothing every go 'wrong' or happen to them that would cause upset, this is just not the reality of how it is.  We are all experiencing ups and downs in life.  And who says everything has to go right anyway?  Just because an experience is not enjoyable it doesn't mean it is not valuable.

Everything our kids go through provides them with the lessons they need for their development.  This experience is teaching him exactly what he needs to know about friendships and this learning is the foundation for how he interacts with friends in his future, potentially for the rest of his life.  Just because it does not match the ideal I have of it, it doesn't mean that it is not exactly what needs to happen for him to learn what he needs to learn. Who knows what is on the other side of this experience.

While I will do my utmost to talk to his teachers about what is happening and how we can overcome this issue, and I will continue to help him get a realistic understanding of the situation and his self-worth, I ultimately cannot control how he perceives life, what he learns from this and how he responds.

This, unfortunately is true no matter what age your child is at, which is ultimately why I wrote The Happy Mum Handbook.  If we learn for ourselves how to handle life when it is at its worst, or even when it's just not enjoyable for whatever reason, and we can maintain our own level of self-worth during these times, then we are better equipped to help our kids learn how to cope too, without them feeling worth-less.

Do I question whether I have taught him enough?  Do I question whether I could have done something different to prepare him for school?  Do I wonder whether perhaps I have shared some of my insecurities or beliefs about life that has contributed to who he is today?

Absolutely, but the bottom line is the past is over and I can only ever share with him the knowledge that I have at any given time and I have done the very best I could.  We can never control how our child's life unfolds and we must learn to look at the value of what they are experiencing, whether it is good or bad.

My quote today on facebook was "We all have bad days where life doesn't go to plan. It is just part of our whole life experience containing ups and downs. Don't allow this 'bad day' to have more power than that, as it will pass by and bring with it a new day. Seek out what is going right in your life so you can remember that wherever there is cloud, there is always sunshine behind it."

I must remember that where there is bad there is also an equal amount of good in the situation.  I just need to find it and teach him to look for it too, and then hope that he does.

Regardless of what is happening in our child's or our own lives, if we continue to look at life this way, that is all we can do.

Okay, so totally inspired after watching (for the gazillionth time) my favourite self help movie by Wayne Dyer - The Shift - Standard Version DVD">Ambition to Meaning, I was feeling very enlightened and spiritually moved.  To paint the picture, all was quiet, the kids were in bed, the hubby was on the computer and it was just me in a dark room with the TV, no interruptions and this thought-provoking movie, so it was easy to slip into an awesomely inspired state.

As always these kinds of movies make me contemplate my life (as they are supposed to) and hence, the following facebook comment was posted:

"Mums are always doing, planning, controlling, managing. When are we ever just Be-ing. It's not because we HAVE to live like this, it is because we THINK we have to live like this. What would happen if we just started to allow things to unfold, observe our life, not react, and accept our lives as they unfold without ...interference? This is going to be my mission tomorrow. I'll let you know how I go."

By saying this I didn't mean to imply that we should stop being responsible and start neglecting our children, but instead, begin to become aware of just how much we were trying to control the outcome of our lives (and our child's) and just how much of this causes motherhood stress.  I was interested to know that if I set myself the mission of just allowing my life to unfold without unnecessary interference, and with observation and awareness, just how this would make me feel.

Here's how it all went down:

Within minutes of making the pledge to just 'be' a mum and reduce the unnecessary planning, controlling and 'managing' in my life,  I found myself in the shower concocting my plan for how the next day was going to unfold. 

It was going to be raining, so I needed to get the kids ups and ready.
I would allow them to play their DS for an hour while I cleaned up.
Then I would take them to the shop and buy some ingredients for we were going to do some cooking to occupy their time.  (If the truth be told, the agenda was not to have fun with my kids, but to 'occupy their time'.)
Then that would take us to lunch, where after that, I would clean up and they would play.  I would get them a video and play a game with them.  By then it would be dinner time where we would be getting ready for bed and that would be the end of  my day.

Suddenly my whole next day was mapped out and I had become a walking to do list.  All this within minutes of my pledge!!  Wasn't I supposed to be going with the flow?  Obviously this was going to be harder than I thought.

Okay, so the next day, I started off really well.  I went with the flow, stopping myself from reacting to the millions of kisses that my five year old gives me up and down my arm as an excuse to smell my skin (yes people this is sweet, but incredibly annoying). Instead I decided to appreciate his affection albeit for a hidden agenda, and gently stop him and give him a big hug instead, which he also loves.

I became aware of how much my kids annoy me when I'm on the computer so that they can have my attention and I started to really look at them when they were speaking.  I mean really see them and I felt filled with love for who they were and for them being my kids.  (I literally felt that warm and fuzzy feeling you get when you are looking at a sleeping newborn baby).

So as the morning progressed and I had the kids ready to go to the shops, we were walking out the door when my four year old spotted a snail on the front patio.  He points it out to me and says, 'Can I touch it?'  Without even thinking, my answer was No.  I hadn't event considered the question before the response came charging out of my mouth.

'Why?' He said.  I thought, 'Gee I don't know why Ryan.  Why can't he touch the snail Jackie [that's me]? Hmm I don't really know', I answered myself, 'Perhaps because maybe it's been 5 minutes since you barked an order at him and you felt bored, lol?  I don't really know why he can't touch the bloody snail.

So I let him touch the bloody snail.  What is the harm in it? Why did I say no so instantaneously without even thinking?  This is obviously something that I do quite often.

Throughout the weekend I found that time after time where I would interfere with arguments that the kids were quite capable of solving themselves.  I made detailed plans for how they would spend their day or how I would fit in this bit of housework or that bit of housework while they were doing something, so that I wasn't interrupted.  I regularly stopped myself from finishing their sentences to hurry them up and continually had to bring my awareness back to the present moment and engage in what was happening now, reeling my attention back from being consumed with my intricate plans for my future.

Purely by holding the intention of becoming aware, not attaching to outcome and allowing as much of my life to unfold naturally as possible, I learnt just how much of my life (and my experience as a mum) was spent not appreciating the time with my kids and getting caught up with what I had to do next.  Furthermore, I also realised just how much expectation I give to life unfolding the way I want it to and can easily see why I have to stop my thoughts from barreling down the path towards anger.

Now all I needed to do, in order to stop the battle of anger of stress, was to scale back, chill out, stop the unnecessary planning that I keep doing and stay aware of what is going on right now.  Otherwise, I'm going to end up missing out on enjoying a lot of my life!

It was a pretty insightful exercise to do and one that will change how I go about my day to day activities....

I would be interested to hear from anyone who has tried something similar or who is willing to trial this on themselves.