When my kids were little time-out at our house consisted of sending the kids to sit in the \u201chappy chair\u201d where they would have to stay until they were able to be happy again. \u00a0Our \u201chappy chair\u201d was a bright yellow chair with a sunshine and happy kids painted on it \u2013 all designed to inspire its occupant with feelings of joy and happiness.<\/p>\n
Where did I come up with the idea for a \u201chappy chair\u201d you may be asking?\u00a0 Well at the time my kids were born, I was a young mom, just out of college.\u00a0 When I had attended BYU my Child Development teacher taught us that time-out for children should be in a place with a positive outlook rather than a negative one.\u00a0 \u00a0And thus my idea was born for the “happy chair”.\u00a0 (clearly my own parents hadn\u2019t taken that particular class in college because when I was a kid and we were naughty we got sent to the \u201cpig table\u201d to eat alone…hmmmm\u2026that might explain why we all grew up paranoid about our weight :)\u2026but I can\u2019t blame my parents ,after all, they were trying to raise ten of the most out-of-control children at the time and its just a wonder they didn\u2019t end up in a loony bin themselves after putting up with all of us)!<\/p>\n
Back to the “happy chair” –\u00a0that \u201chappy chair\u201d worked great with my two kids as they were growing up.\u00a0 They would do something naughty, get sent to the \u201chappy chair\u201d where they would sit and cry and scream for a few minutes until finally they would start yelling \u201cI\u2019m gonna be happy now,\u00a0 I\u2019m gonna be happy\u201d.\u00a0 Their first few yells were not very convincing, especially since they were said with snot running down their face and tears flowing, but after a few more minutes of saying they were gonna be happy they would eventually calm down a little, wipe off their tears, and smile for real \u2013 that cute little kid smile they had when they were trying so hard to be genuinely happy so they could get out of the chair.\u00a0 At that point they were told they would come out and they would run over to give me a huge hug and an \u201cI\u2019m sorry mom\u201d and then they were quickly off to play again, happy as a clam.<\/p>\n
I was thinking today that we grown-ups could probably use a time out in a \u201chappy chair\u201d once in a while ourselves.\u00a0 Some days things pile up like crazy and the stress level continues to rise and you feel like a either a volcano about to erupt, or an ice cube that is put into an oven to melt away.\u00a0 Those are the moments when you need to be able to recognize that what you really need is to take a time out and sit in the nearest \u201chappy chair\u201d\u2026allow yourself to cry and scream if needed\u2026but then within a few minutes its time to wipe off the tears and say \u201cI\u2019m gonna be happy now, I\u2019m gonna be happy.\u201d\u00a0 You may require saying it three or four more times until you can truly calm down and put on that smile again.\u00a0 Then get up from the chair, and if necessary, go hug anyone you mistreated and say \u201cI\u2019m sorry\u201d.\u00a0 Then go play again, happy as a clam.<\/p>\n
A great quote to keep in mind today is this:<\/p>\n
\u201cLaugh when you can, apologize when you should, and let go of what you cannot change.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n A<\/span><\/span>nd I would add to the end of that quote:\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>“And when necessary, take a time-out in the Happy Chair!”<\/span><\/p>\n ~Amy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When my kids were little time-out at our house consisted of sending the kids to sit in the \u201chappy chair\u201d where they would have to stay until they were able to be happy again. \u00a0Our \u201chappy chair\u201d was a bright yellow chair with a sunshine and happy kids painted on it \u2013 all designed to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2575,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1964,838,46,251,69,1962,240,1735,1966,41,67,51,1965,244,65,1238,55,180,1963,464,181,38,104,153,1668,27,112,81,275,149,1734,54,1961,125,250],"class_list":["post-3710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-angry","tag-apologize","tag-attitude","tag-balance","tag-byu","tag-child-development","tag-children","tag-cry","tag-crying","tag-entrepreneur","tag-entrepreneurship","tag-family","tag-frustrated","tag-grateful","tag-gratitude","tag-grumpy","tag-happiness","tag-happy","tag-happy-chair","tag-joy","tag-laugh","tag-leadership","tag-let-go","tag-positive","tag-sad","tag-self-confidence","tag-self-improvement","tag-smile","tag-stress","tag-success","tag-tears","tag-time-management","tag-time-out","tag-women","tag-work"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3710"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3710\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3719,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3710\/revisions\/3719"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}