Mirroring Monday – Snowpants Edition

Start the week off right with examples of mirroring from the team at Connected Parenting. If you’re new to Connected Parenting and want to find out more about mirroring and the CALM method, check out this podcast by Jennifer Kolari (courtesy of Penguin Group USA).

This week’s Mirroring Moment is from Cindy Smolkin. Enjoy!

This morning my 5-year-old son and I arrived at his school for our usual morning drop off. Prior to leaving the house we had a big debate about whether it was his class’s turn to be in the yard or in class before the bell rang. The debate was really about whether he needed to wear his snowpants or not. His heels were not dug in too deeply and it was quite easy for him to get to a place of agreement to put on his snowpants as the thought of putting them on in the car and missing yard time was not too appealing. However, when we arrived and saw that yes, in fact, it was his class’s turn to be out in the yard, he asked (with a bit more urgency) if I could wait until the bell rang, meet him inside and help him to remove his snowpants as it was too crowded and he needed help. My internal knee-jerk response was to giggle and say something like,

“You take your snowpants off every day by yourself. In fact, your teacher tells me that you are one of the fastest to get dressed and undressed.”

But, feeling pretty patient at that moment, and really hearing what my son was saying, instead I said,

“Yeah … there are a lot of kids in your class and the area to change in is pretty small. It must get pretty crowded. I bet people end up stepping over one another.”

He laughed and said, “Okay mom. Bye.” And that was the end of that.

Share your own favorite mirroring moment in the comments below. Or are you stumped? Feel free to leave a comment describing a situation you encountered where you couldn’t figure out how to mirror. We’ll try to incorporate it into a future Mirroring Monday post.

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