Maurice Sendak was once asked to share his biggest piece of advice about raising children. “Love them,” he said.
At first I was like, well duh. Isn’t that just super obvious?
One day last week, Rhys had a pretty rough day at preschool… long story short he was bit by another kid and that’s not too uncommon at that age, but you wanna know that he’s safe and something you’d have to repeatedly worry about. It was easy to jump into problem solving mode, talking to the school and what not. Now Maurice Sednak’s advice makes a lot of sense to me. The most important thing in the moment was making sure my kid felt loved and safe. Sometimes that response can get buried by overthinking and problem solving.
We figured, getting to go to the zoo on a weeknight wouldn’t be a bad way to show Rhys some love. Kai and Juniper went to the zoo for the first time, and we found the new area opened as kind of an ultimate playground.
Bad days happen, but it’s a lot of fun to respond to someone having a bad day with some creativity, spontaneity, and lots of love.
Zoo Afternoon