Mellow Out

I'm attempting to be a mellower person, inspired by Buddhism and the fact that life is too short to spend it with my unders in a twist about every little thing.

An example: my two kids and two friends are outside on the back patio deck blasting music and playing a drum machine. Sine the friends live next door, and nobody lives next door on the other side at the moment, I doubt that anyone in the neighborhood cares. So why should I? At least they're outside.

I used to get super uptight when there was this much noise, and while it's still not my favorite thing, the kids seem to be enjoying it and it isn't hurting anybody. I just need to take it in and not get involved.

That's another area of self-improvement I'm intent on: not getting involved in my kids' petty disputes with their friends. That smacks of helicopter parenting, and I don't want to do that to them (or myself). So my challenge is being able to listen to them argue, but not step in. Or, for example, when one of my children comes home crying about an injustice, they are now old enough that they should be able to use their words in a conflict situation as opposed to "running to tell".

This is challenging work. It's hard work being mellow.