Ting ting ting ting ting.
You can hear those tiny little beads scattering all over the wooden floorboards.
You slowly close your eyes. Take a sloooow breath. Give yourself a little pat on the back for not reacting in a nanosecond with the absolute rage of someone who's just jumped on Lego pieces in bare feet.
You don't even need to turn around.
They kept pulling on the necklace.
The one you asked them not to pull.
The one you said would break and go everywhere if they pulled it.
And here you are, listening to the last of the little beads do their tiny bounce before they silently settle on their chosen patch of the kitchen floor.
Here's the thing about mistakes. If we think people are either good or bad, clever or not, then getting something wrong doesn't feel like doing something wrong — it feels like being wrong. That's when kids start hiding things, lying, blaming the dog. Not because they're bad kids. Because they're terrified of being seen as bad.
You don't have to fake calm about the beads. Be annoyed, that's fine. But you can also work through it with them. "Yep, that's a mistake, and mistakes get sorted, not buried." Otherwise they become worries, and worries only get bigger if they aren't dealt with.
As I always bang on about, books are a brilliant way to do exactly that.
So, here's this week's book.
Tiger, Don't Worry! by Daishu Ma
Tiger, Don't Worry features a little tiger who keeps messing up. He breaks things, and then he does a runner. Nice one.
Eventually his mate Mei convinces him to stop running and go back.
We all mess up and make mistakes.
We can hide away from them in fear of getting in trouble, or we can just own up. People are generally happy to help, even when a mistake has been made, if we are open and honest about it.
Revolutionary.
So that's what you do with the beads. You channel your inner Mei. You help them own up to the fact they just made a really annoying mistake.
For those of you already on holiday, I hope that you are getting a bit of a breather, for now at least. For those of you with a week left to go, you can do this!
Becca x