The grocery store

7/18/14  The grocery store.

Brad and I took the kids to the grocery store for the first time since we started this program. Everything was fine until we got to the end. I looked over and saw Loreli helping the bagging person by bagging a few things. She was dropping the tomatoes into the nearly empty bag and I knew there was going to be a slew of things put on top of them.

"Hey Loreli, come over here and let them bag okay?"

"I know how!"

"I know, come over here please."

She stopped and stood still with angry face.

I asked Brad to pay and took her outside. "What's going on? I didn't ask you to do anything unreasonable."

Angry face.

"Was there a better way for me to say that?"

"You could have just said, 'Loreli' and then (motioning to come)."

"That was pretty much what I did. Were you embarrassed?"

"Yes."

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to embarrass you. Do you know why I wanted you to stop?"

"No..."

"You were putting tomatoes in a mostly empty bag and I knew other stuff was going to go on top and squash them."

"Oh!"

"I didn't want tomato sauce :-)"

Giggling, "Yeah, that would be bad."

"Next time you feel angry or embarrassed what do you need to do?"

"Say, 'I'm angry because...' and tell you why."

"Exactly! And then I can help you work through it right?"

"Right."

In the past I would have let her stew over it until she got over it on her own. This was time consuming but a better result in the long run. Less confusion.