When I was sick with Covid, doing pretty much nothing but aching, resting, and sleeping more than I’ve slept in years, I got a call out of the blue from a young mother I had met months before. She needed to talk.

She told me that the call helped her, but I know it really helped me.  I think that perhaps a loving God prompted her to call me that day. Helping someone who was totally outside my germ-infested four walls took my mind off my troubles.  It changed the direction of my interior monologue and brightened my entire day.

Substituting a positive direction for a negative one is an art that I try to practice with young children when they aim themselves in the wrong direction, start to act out, or begin to melt down. 

Such as when my three-year-old grandson began to melt down on a walk recently because he was not allowed to push the stroller. Deputizing him to run ahead and show us which way to turn at the corner changed his focus.   Once that was done (and we praised him for it) I asked him if he could go ahead of us and count the cracks in the sidewalk. He very happily did and was so proud of himself when he reached a hundred (skipping a lot of numbers but who cares? 😊 ).

Or when I was babysitting our fifteen-month-old granddaughter Aria while her parents were working.  Aria had been fed, her diaper changed, and she wasn’t thirsty.  All her basic needs were met. But she wanted her mother.  She roared loudly and inconsolably. I tried distracting her for a few seconds with toys and a mirror, but soon she remembered her complaint and started roaring again. Finally, I took her outside, into the sun. I showed her how she could touch a leaf of the hanging fern on the front porch and feel the petals of a coneflower.  So simple.  She forgot her grievance completely.

As my sister Carolyn would always say about fussy children: “Get them outside!” 

Positive distraction.

It works for all of us.