TMI Tuesday: Feeding Off Daddy

We all have good days and bad days for various reasons. When it is a particularly long day at the office, I have to deal with some other issues, or there is just a lot of work to be done I tend to be quite stressed and can sometimes be a little abrupt (to say the least) in my demeanor. This is pretty much the way it has always been and I have done my best to try and keep those things from entering our home. This is especially important now because our son can definitely sense when something is a little off or if daddy is having a bad day. He feeds off daddy's mood.

Many times, my son’s mood reflects my own which is why I try my best to push everything aside, leave everything at the office, in the car, or where ever I can store those pressing matters, and focus on the present, focusing on just being with my son. I think this might be why he always seems to have a smile when I walk in the door although I can tell how well I am suppressing everything else by the simple fact of how fast he crawls to my ankles. At the same time I can tell when he senses that I am just run down or not feeling well as he tends to be a little more careful around me and comes in for hugs a couple more times than usual.

Lately, my son has gotten better at picking up inflection in my voice as well. I can see it in the look on his face after I say something. Actually, he understands a lot more than most people give him credit for as he is sometimes the first to laugh at jokes or to give me a quick glance when something I say catches his attention. While he has yet to speak a clear word beyond mama and dada, the vocabulary seems to be slowly building as well. In addition to my mood, I am really having to watch my words more and more every time I walk through the door.

This whole thing is something that really isn’t talked about much on the forums or is a main focus in parenting books but my mood has a huge impact on my son’s personality. He is a happy infant right now and I hope that he remains that way… I can’t imagine what he would be like had I not put forth the effort to leave all those things outside of our home. I definitely know that our relationship, our bond, would not be what it is today had I been a grumpy daddy every time I walked through the door. Now I just have to do my best to keep it up.