Patience at Target

We had a great weekend. We went out, had fun, ate ice cream, made it through a good portion of church, and spent time with family. It tends to be easier to be patient and see the good in little things when the kids are happy and the day is going smoothly. Lately, my patience hasn't quite been where it should be, so I learned a lot and saw a lot of good this weekend.

The past few weeks, Bug has had a new thing to be particular about: going in and out of doors. At church, for example, he always goes in the far right door, then out the same one (so far left as we're leaving). He has decided he always wants to go in and out the same doors (the green "IN" doors) at places like Target, too. Usually, that's not a problem, but it's Christmastime and stores are much more busy and crowded than when we typically go out.

We've been working on this door thing, and the day was going so well, I was surprised when Bug stopped about 10 feet from the "OUT" door and silently started showing signs of agitation. He wanted to go out the "IN" doors - because green means go - but there were carts blocking the space between the two sets of doors and lots of customers. I tried talking him through it: "We go in the green and out the red!", "Look, all the people leaving are going through the red doors!", so on and so on. He wasn't having it. Dad tried some different logic, too. Still nothing. Still staying firmly in place, pointing at the green doors and wanting to leave against the flow of foot traffic.

It would have been easy to just pick him up and go to the car (something I've done before, with chaotic results), but we didn't want a meltdown and we weren't in any hurry. I started thinking about how Bug loves letters and is starting to recognize words, so I thought I'd try that - I felt it was a long shot, but couldn't hurt. And, wonderfully, that ("O-U-T spells 'out' and we need to go out!") got him to go, no problem.

Getting Bug through a door may seem like such a small thing, but it was a great lesson for me. First, as a parent (especially one to a child with special needs), you have to think creatively. What I thought would make sense to him, didn't. I had to try to see things from his perspective a little better and guess what track his brain was on. More importantly, for everyone to be happy and content, we had to do the hard thing. Standing in the exit of Target and trying to reason with a preschooler really isn't too hard in the grand scheme of things, but it's an experience that I need to remember. Instead of letting impatience and my feelings get in the way of things, we were patient and took the time to work through things with Bug instead of trying to change his thought process. We took the more difficult route, but the return was well worth the effort.