Tonight was a particularly rough night for my kindergartner. (and subsequently for the rest of us as well) He was struggling through playtime, through homework, through dinner having meltdown after meltdown. At one point when he was informed he hadn't behaved nicely enough to put up his dinosaur decals he threw his self on the floor.
"Mooooaaammmmmmuh!?! You're emptying my buuuuuhhhhckuuuut!"
His teacher uses the bucket analogy to teach kindness in the classroom. Awesome! Love the idea of saying nice things to your friends to make them feel good and remembering not to say mean things because you might take drops out of your friends' buckets. All "hippy dippy S#!%" according to my husband but I eat this stuff up.
Problem: this little turd bucket is throwing himself on the floor because I've drained his bucket!?! Seriously kid?
"You need to be responsible for filling your own bucket."
"Nnnuuuhoooo! You have to do nice things to fill my buuuuhhhckuuutttt!"
"Well I think there's something wrong with your bucket. I've been filling it all night. I told you I liked your drawing, I taught you how to use a pick axe, I gave you ice cream for completing level 2 of your homework. But your bucket is still empty. I think it has a hole, or a leak."
"It duuuuuuhhhhhhs!!!! My bucket has a black hole."
"You're in control of that black hole dude. You've got to close it up. It's sucking in all of the positive drops in your bucket."
I started talking about happy things. Eventually so did he. We spent the next fifteen minutes talking about happy things. Our trip to the pumpkin patch the day before, the fact that I got to walk an otter at work, how his brother had helped him mine some gems in the backyard. At the end of those fifteen minutes he said, "Tell me one more good thing about your day! It'll fill both our buckets!"
So I told him about the shipment of elk, deer, pig, and cow meat we got for the tigers at work and how excited the tigers were to get those goodies. I looked at his little face with only 20 minutes before was beat read and angry....sure enough, buckets were overflowing. I had a first step on the moon type moment. I had taught my little a lesson. Filling other people's buckets could fill your own bucket and thinking happy thoughts is amazing rocket fuel to send you soaring through the milky way and away from the black holes. It took 20 minutes and a LOT of deep breaths, but I did it.
For my husband's sake I also did a little bucket check of my own and looked around in my galaxy making sure there were no black holes in my bucket.
Lot's of time life feels like rocket sciences. It's okay though just fill your buckets with happy thoughts and try
avoid the black holes.
