They Can Sense Fear. Kids That Is.
The tumultuous conditions resembled my mood!
In order to escape the wrath of Irene, the girls and I drove three hours to Raleigh, our typical hurricane safe haven. Kevin would be working the entire time and I was not interested in toughing out the storm by myself with the girls. After having to evacuate last year, I felt like a pro when it came to packing up our valuables and preparing for the worst.
Secretly I was furious at the news channels for all the hype that had created, but it would be ignorant for me to think that nothing was going to happen.
I love Raleigh, it’s the perfect getaway for us country bumpkins. But this time I wasn’t looking forward to our time there. I was worried about the damage that the hurricane might bring, I was worried about Kevin because we would be leaving him behind in the danger zone, and I was worried that we would come back to no power for days and days.
Let’s just say that I was not in the best of moods the weekend that Irene hit the NC coast. I was straight up fearful of what was to come….. and my girls some how picked up on it.
The only word to describe their behavior that Friday and Saturday…..is BAD. They were just plain bad!
As soon as the initial excitement of being in a new place wore off, they were fighting with each other all day long over every little toy, snack and anything else you could imagine. They were even fighting over me! As soon as one would get in my lap, the other one wanted to get in my lap. As soon as one started looking at a book, the other one would want to snatch it away. And neither of them would listen to a word of what I would ask them to do. Of course during this time I was trying to watch the news, talk on the phone with my worried family members and figure out how I was going to keep in touch with Kevin when there was no power or cell phone coverage where he was. Kind of a stressful situation!
In other words, I was preoccupied and my kids demanded so much more than they usually do. It was just plain exhausting.
The next day after the storm had passed I was in a much better mood and they were perfect angels for me. It made me look back and evaluate the conflicting time that we had had the day before and the only thing that I can think of is that they picked up on the stress that I was emulating and it made them act out.
That may just be my own theory and whether it’s true or not I choose to see it as a lesson when the next stressful situation comes around. Try to stay calm no matter what or you’ll have a couple of devil kids around you!
How did your kids react to the hurricane?
