Adorable Chaos Cleans Up

The Adventurer (age 10) loves to help people, animals and the planet. The Old Bridge Sanctuary Clean-Up was a perfect opportunity for us to work together and volunteer our time. I scheduled a babysitter for my two little ones, because I wasn't sure they could handle all the walking. And I was a little afraid of how they might behave. The babysitter canceled last minute, so we all headed out bright and early Tuesday morning for the clean-up.

"Giving kids clothes and food is one thing but it's much more important to teach them that other people besides themselves are important, and that the best thing they can do with their lives is to use them in the service of other people."Dolores Huerta

After an hour or two in the woods cleaning up garbage, we made our way back to the parking area. I was feeling pretty good. We had gotten through the event with no major upsets. My girls were pitching in, taking pictures, chatting with people and best of all, no blood was shed. No one got hurt, and no one hurt someone else.

So I thought I was getting away with it. Completing the task and getting to walk away with a smile of a job well done, with my well behaved little women.

As fate would have it, the trails were squeaky clean, but my children's mouths were not.

As the group gathered to take a picture, my sweet Princess (age 3) started saying something highly inappropriate. She learned this term, in reference to the uncomfortable location of sand after swimming in the ocean, from someone who shall remain nameless. I'll give you a hint, the term rhymes with sack of rye grass.   Regardless of my threats and pleading, she wouldn't stop. And then the Butterfly (age 6) joined in for a little chanting.

Not cool. Not cool at all. We left as quickly as I could manage, which means we were last to actually leave the site. I didn't even say much on the ride home. I didn't yell, I didn't lecture or threaten. I drove home feeling defeated.  

So I did what many of us do when we don't know what else to do. I turned to FaceBook. I asked my people for advice and to commiserate.

Jerilee Wei, a freelance writer from Tampa, Florida had this advice for me:

"Laugh about it when they are adults and get them back by telling the story - still doing that to my daughter, like the time I had to go to the school because she wouldn't sleep during naps and was disturbing the other kids, so they moved her out in the hall. They went out to check on her. She'd taken off all her clothes and sweetly told them 'my mommy always let's me sleep like that.' Try and explain that little fib to a teacher."

Author of Eye On Life Magazine's blog  I Hate My Job, Pamela Marie Grundy shared this story:

"When my eldest daughter was around two she was small for her age but spoke in complete sentences, so people were always amazed. One time we were in the grocery store in line and she was in the cart. She tugged on the guy in front of us, who turned around and smiled at her, assuming she was, you know, barely verbal. She beamed up at him and said, out of the blue, with a big grin on her face, "My mommy has hair on her bottom."  He turned beet red and so did I. I have no idea why she said that at that moment. I didn't do anything. Just got out of there as fast as I could."

This all reminds me of a story my mother has told many times to embarrass me. A religious solicitor of some sort knocked at the door early one evening. Typically, she would calmly take a step back and slam the door full force in their face, but she was distracted. It was bath time. Now, standing at the front door of the house, you could see straight through the large windows to the backyard. The visitor turned red and left when she spotted me — having escaped the bath tub — dancing naked around the yard. I was three, the same age as my little Princess.   So I guess I had this coming to me.

Clearly, this kind of thing happens to the best of us. It's humiliating, a little humbling and a grand opportunity to… um… learn something. I'm sure of it.We learn to handle the situation with grace. We stretch our ability to roll with the punches. We stop taking ourselves so seriously.

"Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not be bent out of shape." Author Unknown.

As for my young ones, they learned  about pitching in and caring for the planet. Soon enough, they'll understand that what goes around comes around and you get what you give.  They embarrassed me on this occasion. Someday, I'll probably make them want to run for cover with my un-cool-ness. And they'll learn to get over it.

"Nothing is so contagious as example; and we never do any great good or evil which does not produce its like." Francois de La Rochefoucauld