Happy Hoofbeats

A recent morning not too long ago I heard my son awake upstairs, jumping around.  He was clearly in a good mood.  My son is a “morning person,” and always has been.  He has done well keeping himself entertained in the morning so the rest of his family can sleep in a little.  He usually is pretty quiet, but this morning I heard him upstairs.  It occurred to me that I could easily ruin his good morning by yelling upstairs for him to “Be quiet,” or giving him a lecture.  Instead I decided to sit downstairs and listen for a while, grateful that he is a joyful, happy kid, who woke up in a good mood.

I fall into this trap when I am reading or doing work on the computer.  Not long ago my daughter came downstairs singing with headphones on while I was typing a message on my computer. She was clearly in a good mood, enjoying a good song and doing a gleeful little dance as she was getting a snack.  Similarly, I wondered how I might ruin this mood by barking at her for breaking my concentration.  In the end, that email was not urgent, and we had no timetables to keep.  I decided to watch her for a while and be grateful that she was joyful and happy.

The desire to have “peace and quiet” as an adult is something of which we should not be ashamed.  We do have work to finish, and deadlines to meet.  We need to get our kids focused on finishing tasks when we have a timetable to keep.  And sometimes our stress level requires us to have time to decompress.  But sometimes the efficiency we desire is not really a requirement, and our desire for “peace and quiet” robs us of an opportunity to join our kids in joyful moments.  And worse, it may rob them of these happy moments.

Maybe as we hear these happy hoofbeats, we should think about joining in on their joy.  We might find a little bit of happiness there ourselves.