Life is hard.
I feel like I can just leave those three words and walk away and all of my 2.7 readers (I don't know why one of you is now only seven tenths of a human, but you are) will be fine with the simplicity and profundity that those words are. I won't, however. Today is Thursday. Thursday is blog day. Sure you may or may not know that. You may or may not care. I do. I feel it is the little bit of consistency I need in my life to make sure that my writing game stays on point. Last week I did not post a blog. I almost had one waiting in the wings to come out for Thursday. I almost made it Friday. Then I realized that my point was better made by doing this today. One week from my missed post. Two weeks since my last. Again, this may not seem important since I have switched my blog days countless times previously, but this is where I am. One week ago, my son turned eight. This isn't some remarkable fete. He had a birthday. He has had seven before this one. You know the drill. Despite it being his birthday, the child still had school. This wasn't an issue when he was in public school, but now that he is a home schooled child he thought he might be able to get away with it. Nope. We carried on. I chose not to. Wednesday night my husband snapped at me for asking for help decorating the house so late at night. "Why must we always do things so late?" My response was simple, "Because I am waiting for him to go to bed!" There was nothing I enjoyed more on my birthday than waking up and seeing the simple "Happy Birthday" sign hanging in our apartment, and then our house. I wanted Caleb to have the same. Doing the work Wednesday night left Thursday more of the day for me to enjoy being teacher mom. My children see me working constantly. When I make a choice to put away my work, it shows them they I am putting them before myself and before my work. I am sure that at his age he didn't notice. I'm sure he will never notice (he's a guy). But I still must make the choice. As a parent, our lives are nothing but choices. Well, at least that is what I believe it should be. When my mother was growing up, Dr. Spock took the nation by storm. And in one swoop he destroyed the rolls of parents and children. Not to be dramatic, but if I were a parent then I might have screamed, "Anti-Christ!" Parents went from complete control and do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do to anarchy. The world of "Because I said so" was slipping through the grasps of parents everywhere. And just like that the choices were left to the children and not the parents. How many times have you been somewhere fun and heard the parent ask the child, "Are you ready to go, now?" I usually answer before the child can - no. No, your child does not want to leave the playground, the pool, the jump castle, or anything else that is more fun than the living room. I hear parents ask their children questions that need to be turned around and stated. When did telling children what to do become such a terrible thing? Oh yeah, Mr. I didn't like my butt getting spanked Spock. Did it ever occur to Spock that parents tell kids what to do not because they're mean but because they're loving? As humans we all want to rebel. We all want to get out on the high way and press the limit. We want to eat nothing but cake and ice cream for dinner. We want to stay up watching TV past our bedtime. But as adults, we know the consequences. We know that driving too fast could end up in a wreck. We know that dinner of sweets will lead to diabetes. And we know that staying up late will make it harder to get up in morning which will lead to tardiness and consequences will continue to trickle down. As parents, we need to teach our children the reasons before the consequences take over. (Now don't get me wrong. Sometimes they need to get the belly ache to realize that we actually know what we're talking about when they say they want more candy and they need to stop. I'm all for consequences.) I believe it is our job to let them know what the impending consequences are before they get there. If they still choose that route, then sometimes they just need to reap what they sow. I made a choice last week to not blog for my son to know his birthday matters to me. I'm making a choice today to blog to let my children know that sometimes you just have to keep working if you want something great in life. Each of our choices as parents now takes on new meaning. Are we setting the example? Are we keeping things from them? Are we making choices that benefit them as children? And how much weight should we give their responses/reactions to our decisions? How much should we care about what they are gleaning from each choice? My, oh, my how this never ends. Hopefully. Hopefully, as a parent, this will never end. I hope that the decisions I make in twenty years will positively effect my children. I hope that I'm the person they come to when they need to make their own choices. Life is hard. We make hard choices. We will always wonder if we have made the right choices. But there's no going back now. We press on and push forward.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorI have a lot to say about a lot of things. Archives
May 2023
Categories |