My daughters are four and they’ve recently entered the phase where they take everything personally. I accidentally picked up their plate when they wanted to get it themselves? Meltdown. I put their backpack in the car (which I do every day) when they secretly wanted to do it themselves? Meltdown. I stayed in the bathroom with them or I left the bathroom? Meltdown. You get the picture.

Anyways. There’s two of them and one of me and we have multiple therapies and activities to get to every day (they’re on the autism spectrum so it’s constant bouncing between everything they need and the few fun normal toddler activities I’ve managed to squeeze in) so this got really old really fast.

So I sat them down and told them I’m on their team. That’s it. “We’re a team. We want the same thing. We want to have fun and be happy. Except I don’t always know exactly what you want. So if I make a mistake, it’s because I didn’t know, not because I wanted to make you mad. Can we be teammates and speak kindly and tell each other with nice voices what we want to happen? If I can, I’ll do it. If I can’t, I’ll tell you why.”

And it’s working. Now when they scream or start freaking out I just remind them I’m on their team and ask them if that’s how you talk to your teammates and they correct themselves. I have them pause and find their calm and use their kind teammate voice before I’ll do what they secretly wanted (if I can) and it’s getting faster and faster every time.

A quick, “Let’s work together as a team,” when they wake up has our mornings moving (mostly) smoothly whereas before we were having two or three meltdowns a morning.

Anyways, it’s a win and I wanted to share it.