turning tears into giggles...

there isn't a day that goes by, that i'm not totally amazed by my children! jaden, in particular, as he finds his way in this big world and learns how to 'fit in' and be accepted by his peers, while still remaining true to himself & feeling proud of his uniqueness - something we try to instill in him, but being only 7 years old, of course he struggles with this

recently, he's developed his own little coping technique for when he gets upset that i'm in love with...

the kids had just finished homework with dad when i got home from work last evening....they wanted to go outside to play until dinner.....i had just bought some new sidewalk chalk and was opening the package for them....a green piece fell to the floor & broke in half - jaden was devastated! he said 'AH MAN!' and started tearing up and going into panic mode 'oh no! not the chalk! mom, what did u do?!'.....i reassured him that everything was fine - that there was plenty more chalk (even another green piece) and that now the broken one was actually 2 pieces - no biggie!

he thought about it for a second, and immediately kicked in his newly developed technique.....he literally forces himself to giggle - through the tears and all - giggle, giggle......at the same time, saying to himself, 'it's ok the chalk broke'.....'there's still more chalk left'

i'm not sure how he makes himself laugh - maybe he's scripting his favorite tom & jerry DVD in his head.....but how cool is that?! not only does he recognize that this accident isn't a huge deal (with a little help from ma) - but he is also able to give himself a little pep talk to help redirect his emotions!

the first time he did this, i just lost it! i cracked up laughing along with him....i thought how funny, he's working through this himself - how freaking cute & brilliant all at the same time! i can't remember what he was upset about, but i know it was small.....because of course if he's upset about something for good reason, or if it's a bigger issue than just a broken piece of chalk, we talk through it.....i definitely want him to understand that it's ok to get upset sometimes.....we've really been working with jaden on understanding his emotions and how to appropriately express them.....he's becoming more in touch with his emotions these days (which is huge in itself), but sometimes he's just not sure how/when to get them out

i've seen him use this new giggle technique several times now & i think it's pretty neat! as soon as he's worked through the tears on his own, all is good again!

'at a boy!