Nine-Year-Old Counsel

So, my oldest daughter, 9-years-old, pulled me aside after bedtime tonight and said she needed to talk to me.  "Mom," she says, "I don't think things got off to the right start tonight.  I shouldn't have been building that stuff at bed time and you shouldn't have yelled at me."  "I think," she tells my in a sweet, soft voice, "you need to be calmer.  Maybe you could watch some other moms and see how they do it--like Nana or Grammie, or Grandma Price."  At this point I'm thinking, "I am sure they weren't so calm either when they had a house full of kids that wouldn't go to bed."  But I am also humbled that she is wise enough to talk to me after everything has calmed down in the house and try to make suggestions on how I can do better--while admitting that she was in the wrong as well.  This girl is wise beyond her years  :).  She counseled me that when I get angry and the kids are not listening to "go in your room and pray.  Ask Heavenly Father to help you be calm."  She doesn't know that I have done that hundreds of times, but hearing her encouragement actually gave me hope that I could be calmer.  Maybe I just felt more hopeful because the kids were are all asleep and I could actually hear what she was saying without having to put a pacifier in someone's mouth.

Today (and every day) there were moments when I was literally trying to do 5 or 6 things at once.  At dinner for instance, I was trying to eat, figure out why #6 was screaming in her high chair, console 4-yr-old #5 who was sitting on my lap crying after a picture frame fell on her shoulder, clean up a spilled smoothie, stop #2 and #3 in their efforts to out-sing each other at the table and give my husband my undivided attention in our dinner conversation.  This pace went on until approximately 2 minutes before dear daughter came to me with her advice for being calm.  I know I'm superwoman, but even superwoman has her limits. 

PS I was wrong about them all being asleep...off I go.