Excerpt from THRIVE AND SURVIVE, ZERO TO FIVE

Little children give moms lots to complain about. They’re messy, loud, demanding, and needy, and that’s just on the good days. Coping with all of this is enough to send a young mom into a tizzy. I (Mary) am going to do a little true confessing here, sharing a motherhood moment I regret to this day, forty years after the fact.

Julia and Karl, ages three and two, were playing happily in the bathtub while I ran back and forth from the next room, working on a project and occasionally checking on them. When it was time to get out of the tub, I instructed them to put all the toys back into the basket, and then I went back into the next room.

When I returned a few minutes later, they had done just the opposite of my instructions. They’d thrown the toys (along with lots of water) all over the bathroom floor, laughing hard at their fun idea. Because it was an overfull day and I was rushing, my response was far from ideal.

I swung my leg back and kicked a plastic truck as hard as I could, flinging it above their heads into the tub wall where it broke into pieces. And it gets worse. Rather than remorse over my anger, my thought was, That’ll show ’em! And I felt really good.

But several hours later I asked myself, What good did that do? What did I teach them by losing my temper as I did? Though neither of them remembers the incident, I certainly do, and I wish I’d shown more self-control. I missed an opportunity to model a quality character trait: forgiveness.

SIDEBAR: CHARACTER TRAITS TO MODEL

• Integrity
• Cheerfulness
• Kindness
• Patience
• Gratitude
• Diligence
• Perseverance
• Optimism
• Forgiveness