I’m having a “terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.” Well, actually it’s not totally terrible, but my brain feels like it is swimming through jello and I’d like to be curled up with a cup of tea and a good book at home rather than trying to put two coherent thoughts together. Know what I mean?
“A terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day” just happens sometimes. Things just don’t seem to go quite right, you’re tired and you’d just like to go back to bed and try again tomorrow. That’s exactly how it is for Alexander in Judith Viorst’s book, “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.” (Simon & Schuster 1987) If he touches something, it spills. If he tries to help, he makes a mess. He just wants to go to Australia.
We all have days like that. Terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days, which truthfully aren’t really all that terrible in the scheme of things, but they feel impossible. In our society, the message is that we have to just push through and try to accomplish something when in reality no matter how hard I try I’m not going to accomplish much. What we really need to do on days like these is to cut our losses, be gentle with ourselves, take a break, get some rest and know that tomorrow things are most likely to go better.
Our children have days like that too when they feel as if everything they touch or try is ending up a disaster. Unfortunately, they don’t always have the larger perspective to know that tomorrow will be better. For them, this moment of disaster and this terrible, horrible, no good day feels like it will last forever. Their whole life seems ruined.
I believe that we place such high expectations on our children as a society that we don’t give them space for days like this, days that are just going to happen. In so many ways, we reinforce the idea that they have to be perfect and at peak performance all the time. We give the message that one bad test result might ruin their whole life or one disaster of a hockey game will change their lives forever. When it won’t!!!
We are truly resilient as human beings. God made us that way. We have creativity and inner strength beyond what most of us think possible. We are made to rise up out of disasters and find new hope and new possibility. So a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day is usually just a one day thing. We need to help our kids understand this and help them find the way that works for them to handle it. We need to teach them to be gentle with themselves on such days, and we, as the adults in their lives, need to be gentle and patient with them too. A hug, a cuddle, a storybook, watching TV together, going for a bike ride, a cup of tea, a glass of lemonade, a cookie, some popcorn – together with loved ones – and suddenly the terrible, horrible, no good day isn’t so bad at all.
©Susan Lukey 2012