My daughter turns two in four months, so you might think I am jumping the gun with this post. Hear me out. My mom always told me that kids manifest into how you speak about them. Time and time again, this has proved true for my family. This isn’t limited to kids, by the way, but I’ll touch on that later. I’ll give you two scenarios:
- my daughter didn’t sleep well & I expect to have a rough day because of it
- she didn’t sleep well but I expect to have a good day anyway
In the first scenario, I am pushing that negative expectation on her, expecting her to be whiny, and honestly I am more likely to be irritable because of this expectation. This expectation never fails to ruin our day. Subconsciously, me thinking she will have a bad day affects my behavior toward her and the things I say. “oh are we feeling super grumpy today?” Something like that, I’ve realized, reinforces her behavior and allows her to indulge in ‘grumpiness’.
Don’t get me wrong, if you’re grumpy, go ahead and be grumpy and work that out however you need to. But when *I* say it, instead of her coming to that conclusion on her own, I am showing her that I don’t have high expectations of her behavior.
In the second scenario, we can have the most miserable night of sleep, waking up constantly, but I will intentionally plan to have a good day anyway and purposefully not impose any negative expectations on her. The difference is genuinely night and day.
I don’t always get it right and I often forget that my expectations of her mold her. I know there are other factors at play here too like my mindset affecting how I perceive the day, but acknowledging this forces me to take accountability for how my day goes. It also gives me the power to make every day a good day, which is pretty monumental in my book.
SO, I choose to not believe in the terrible twos. I don’t want to speak negativity onto a whole phase of her life. I choose not to believe in the threenager phase.
I am not disregarding all the changes and obstacles that developing emotions present, but I am reframing how I look at them.
Remember how I said this doesn’t only apply to children? It goes for myself too. What I believe about myself, more often than not, comes true. If I think I can’t run anymore, I’m not going to try as hard. If I think I can’t do one more push-up, I won’t be able to. These are small examples but in reality, I am a self-fulfilling prophecy, and I must speak accordingly. I have to speak power into my life. I have to believe that I am capable of hard things.
The mind is such a powerful tool. Negative thoughts are a really hard habit to break so when I catch myself in a negative thought cycle, I try to address it immediately.
Do y’all notice a difference in yourself or your children based on your expectations?
Thank you for reading my epiphany! See you next week:)
