Good friends of ours have four kids. About a year ago, the husband was over at our house and I said something to him along the lines of, “I have no idea how you do it”. An avid sports fan, his response went something like this: When you have one child you are playing two-on-one defense, when you have two kids you are playing man defense, and as soon as you have three you start playing zone and hoping for the best.
We play man defense in our house. For example, the other night we arrived home from a birthday party 45 minutes past the girls’ bedtime. With two cranky kids in the back seat, we were on the brink of disaster. As we drove into our community I looked at my husband and said, “We need a plan”. I like to think of this as our huddle. We determined what each girl needed and decided to split up. We parked the car, broke the huddle, and took our respective child. We were on the clock, defending against an imminent meltdown.
We worked quickly to get each of them to bed, knowing that if they started to meltdown it would only take that much longer. Twenty-five minutes later both girls were in bed, asleep, and my husband and I were celebrating a job well done. It was a defensive victory. Final Score – Us 1, Meltdown 0. I’m pretty sure you could actually hear the chorus from “We are the Champions” playing in the background.
It doesn’t always work out as well as it did this particular night, but why dwell on that now? We have to celebrate our “wins” when we get them.
