an Emotional Accident.

About a year ago, one of my sisters was in town visiting for a few days.  I had finished lunch with the kids and had been down in my craft room for a few minutes, working with my sister to photograph items for her Etsy shop...

when I heard a serious cry of pain from my third child.

He is a sensitive little guy and tends to cry easily and frequently, 

but I knew something was definitely wrong. 

I dashed up the stairs.  

As I rounded the banister I see my son kneeling on the floor,

blood dripping from his face and a puddle of blood on the carpet. 

 

Unlike my other sister who was an ICU nurse for years, I get queasy over the smallest little injuries, even paper cuts.  If I could I'd always leave the injuries to another adult to field.  

In any case, I knew that I needed to be as calm as possible to figure out what was going on.  

And though I was somewhat composed I was still very panicky.  

My daughters, who had apparently been with him, weren't saying anything which was adding to the stress.  Our oldest daughter, who truly is mature and responsible, was even giving me a blank stare (I think she was in a bit of shock).  

With no information,

I felt the pressure building inside of me 

and within seconds was getting more and more upset.

Unfortunately my inability to handle the situation calmly was just feeding in to my daughter's silence.  

If looks could kill...she most likely was afraid of me in the moment.  

I abruptly picked up my son to try to console him, move him to the tiled floor and told my daughters to go away, I couldn't handle the extra input.  

Right then my sister came up the stairs and was trying to talk to my oldest about what had happened.  Unlike this daughter she pushed past my sister to get away, most likely because the whole situation had been upsetting to her and she too was dealing with sensory overload.  

Long story shorter, when all was said and done we all felt a bit injured by the chain of events.  What had started as one accident had become a 3 car pile up.

Now that it was calmer and quieter and my son's bloody nose had stopped and he was back to playing, I sat my daughter down to chat.  

The thought came that we had just had several emotional accidents-- 

I was doing the best that I could in the situation, but had made things more unsettling.  

My sister had done the best that she could, having missed more than half of the story, yet my daughter had "collided" with her.  

We talked through the ways the collisions had been albeit unintentional but painful.  We each took turns voicing the accident from our perspective.  Instead of trite apologies, how we handled it allowed for compassion and sincerely saying sorry.  It was a crazy and intense series of collisions, but it turned out being a building experience.

For those wondering, my daughter and son had been playing around with a metal hanger and had put the hook up his nose.  WHAT??  At times like this, I wonder what is going through their heads.  In any case, I was relieved that the bleeding stopped fairly quickly and he was OK.