Grading Your Day
aka How I Managed To Survive Four Weeks of Just Me and The Kids
Last month, Nouelle had to fly to the UK last minute due to a family emergency and I quickly found myself left with the two kids and our Shih Tzu, Charlie. Now this isn’t anything new as she also went there a little over a year ago—albeit for a vacation. The only difference this time is the fact that I’m coming off a failed business venture and have been out of a job for a while. It added stress which made the first night unbearable.
I wasn’t able to sleep due to problems with closing up the business and selling the remaining assets. This was on top of the kids who were sick and had cough at the time. As with most thoughts that I find in my head, I quickly jotted it down in my journal.
Trying to parent on your own while losing your [redacted] at the same time is [redacted] hard.
I was pretty much unlikeable on the first full day Nouelle wasn’t home—that is, in and of itself, a huge understatement. I would’ve resented me if I were the kids. I wouldn’t blame them if they wanted Mom instead.
Thankfully, we’ve established certain habits in our family at this point. During times when it’s just the three of us, we often decide to sleep in our room together. For me, it’s more of practicality—we save on electricity plus there’s less to clean since we’re just using one room. But for our kids, it was keeping Daddy company while Mom’s away.
Another habit is to come together as a family and say a prayer before calling it a day. This has not only helped in our spirituality but also had great benefits in that we won’t say a prayer for the sake of saying one or just to get it out of the way. If there was something preventing us from doing so, we needed to talk about it. Ephesians 4:26 in the Bible says, “Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry,” and we’ve really planted this in our hearts.
All of a sudden my demeanor changed. Instead of ceasing agency over circumstances and just being stressed, I took it as a challenge. One of my prayers was to be able to reflect God’s values to this world—being loving, understanding, and patient among others. I considered this a test and as with most tests, I wanted to ace it.
I wanted to improve not just myself but my overall relationship with our kids. But first, I wanted to get an idea where we were starting from so I asked them to grade our day. No discussion on what constitutes an A, B, or F—just a simple instruction to think back on how the day went and give it a grade. Our 14-year-old RyRy, who’s always been the generous one, gave a B minus. Our 9-year-old Miggy, gave an F before rescinding it and replacing it with a C plus instead. I gave a D and said we can improve on a lot of things.
After doing this for the next couple of days, it started to become a habit the kids looked forward to before ending our day. By now, we weren’t just dishing out grades but also pairing it with a short explanation why. I said this is key because then we’d know the reason behind the grade and do something about it.
One evening, I gave a B minus and said it’s because I ended up feeling very tired from all the chores I had to do that day. This quickly gave way to conversations on how to help with the things we needed to do in the house. After having lunch the following day, Miggy asked, is there anything I can help you with?
Another time, we had what I thought was a pretty rough day and so I was looking forward to hearing what the kids would say. I told RyRy, today was pretty bad huh, prompting her to share how she felt about today. Surprisingly however, she replied with, “this is already better than yesterday,” and that’s how I knew we were on the right track.
It has been a challenging couple of weeks without Nouelle and I have to admit, it’s been somewhat hard managing a household while at the same time nursing an anxious mind. But slowly and surely, we were getting there.
What flipped the switch, I’d say, is changing our mindset about this time in our lives. I think the simple activity of grading our days before going to bed has wired our brains to think back, review the day, and realize there’s another one coming to either improve on mistakes or double down on good things we did.
It had that added benefit of admitting that mistakes were made which required humility. I also think that admitting to them that I had no idea what I’m doing helped. I remember saying, we’re not going to get a lot of things right the first time and that’s good because when we make mistakes—which we will—then we will realize the things we can improve on and make the next day better.
There was this day where I thought we’ve finally aced it. We’re going to finally get A’s, I thought to myself. We’ve been working so hard on improving ourselves and making adjustments so we’re not making the same mistakes time and again. We’ve made huge strides from the day we started grading our days so I had reason to believe we passed today with flying colors.
Me, A.
RyRy, A.
Miggy, C plus.
Initially, I thought did we miss something? Did something bad happen to him that we weren’t aware of? When I asked him to explain why he’s giving a C plus, he simply said because I [kept] watching [TV] until late and my heart quickly filled with joy. He was able to identify a mistake he made and owned up to it. Do you want me to remind you? I offered to help. He simply said, I think I can improve tomorrow. I’ll try.
The nice thing about giving grades to your day is that it’s somehow measurable. Regardless how accurate (or inaccurate), it’s still a measure—a standard. You can tell whether you had a great day or a crappy day instead of just saying today was okay which isn’t saying much and not actionable at all.
So give it a try. Before you tuck the kids in, go around and have everyone in the family grade your day. Hopefully, it’ll work wonders for your family like it did to ours. And if you’re in the same situation as I am, I hope it’ll help you keep the kids alive—I mean, occupied enough until the wife comes home.