About a year ago, I attended an evening workshop organized by the most awesome Moms of Multiples, a group that I joined when I found out I was pregnant with twins. Unfortunately I cannot remember the speaker or the exact topic, but it had to do with employing discipline with toddlers. We also learned about many sanity-saving measures that mothers can take when dealing with the emergence of toddler behavior – many of them involving only simple changes in mindset. I remember one of the recommendations especially clearly, and it was called ‘floor time’. The speaker talked about the well-researched benefits of simply sitting on the floor amongst your kids while they play. Soon after this workshop I tried it out – and I’ve been a believer ever since. So much of my day deals with schedules, prep and tear-down, herding cats, creating excitement, and entertaining my kids, that it was a huge relief to discover the simple beauty of floor time. I get down to their level and enter their world. They can interact with me, or not. They can all jam-pile on me, or not. We can read a book or build something impromptu. It not only connects me more with my kids, but it also connects me back to myself. It forces me to be truly present. I’m not on my phone or laptop during floor time, nor am I reading a book or a magazine. I’m just being.

Today we built a cool crane out of these tinker toy type things, and it was awesome. The kids stepped in and out of the scene to help here and there, and then were so excited to see the finished product. All from a little bit of floor time.