Morning Walks with Attitude

I love walking my 5 year old daughter to school in the mornings. We get to enjoy each other’s company and the early morning weather. Since it’s cooled down quite a bit in the winter, it is a very nice walk that wakes me up better than a cup of coffee.

There was a period of time recently though where my daughter wasn’t getting enough rest at night for whatever reason. Either it would be restless sleep or she would be woken up by persistent coughing at night by her or her little 4 year old brother. One night, she also told me wife that my snoring woke her up. Oops! Regardless, she was waking up with plenty of attitude to serve up to everyone.

One of the morning walks really set me off because there was already tons of attitude before we left the house. About a third of the way into the walk, she was muttering something and I stopped her to say that I wanted to look back on these walks when I’m much older and remember them fondly. I told her they were my favorite part of the day and that I loved spending time with her on the walk to school. If we keep having the attitude come out, it clouds the experience and if she is upset, we can talk normally about it - without the attitude.

Of course she wasn’t quite ready to hear it and we spent most of that walk in silence. When we got to school that day, she apologized for the attitude and honestly from that day on, I haven’t seen it in the morning since then. Earlier this week, she even told me that she loved our walks to school because she gets to spend time with me one on one (since it’s too cold and her little brother usually doesn’t want to come along anymore). That heart to heart talk really got through to her and because I told her how much I enjoyed the walks and why I didn’t want the attitude, it was balanced feedback that she could process. I’ll make sure to use this tool from my toolbox more often and hopefully it’ll continue to yield the same results.