Stopping to Enjoy Parenting is My Personal Challenge
My five-year-old is wonderfully creative. She is always into one craft or another. At school, she has been making a set of paper bag puppets. Pictured are me as a mermaid bride (left) and her father as, well, a bearded bag (right). She made the puppet of me a week ago, then brought the puppet of her father home and staged a wedding. As staged paper bag puppet weddings go, it was adorable and spectacular. My favorite part was that I carried a wand instead of a bouquet.
Enjoying my kids is a battle, which is surprising because they are all three brilliant people brimming with talent and personal wisdom. I mean, look at this cat . . . err, girl:
Those ears she's wearing? She talked me into buying those for her because she wanted to wear them to school the day her friend was absent due to surgery. Her friend has the same headband and wears it near daily. My daughter said, "If I wear cat ears, it will be like [my friend] is with us. Everyone will be thinking of her while she's having surgery."
Since I spend a fair amount of time trying to get my kids to perform acts of kindness, I couldn't very well say no. Sure, Kid 3 could have made her own ears at home, but these were a small expense and they were an exact replica of her friend's.
When her friend was well and back at school, they wore their headbands on the same day and swapped. Kid 3 said, "And you can't tell whether it's mine or hers!" First an act of caring, then an act of sharing.
I'm very glad cuteness overwhelms being overwhelmed. It would be such a shame if I missed these moments of selflessness by my darlings. An example is when I am so defensive I can't be hugged. But not today! Today my 12 year old gave me "the longest hug I've ever given!" He was delighted with himself, and I was delighted to receive it.
And my middle sweetheart is upstairs right now recording a tutorial for Minecraft. She runs her own server and Discord. When she saw me putting my Discord server together, she walked me through the creation of a custom URL. The thought would never have occurred to me as I'm not terribly good with" technical," but she was right that I should set that up and even checked back in the next day to make sure all was working, and without ever asking to be invited to the server. She knows it's part of my non-profit and for adults. She's happy to help me get it running without being in the mix.
What a cool collection of kiddos! Truly.
What do you sometimes struggle to appreciate in your life? I'd love to read what's great about it!
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Good wishes for your juniors. They got a great attitude. All credit goes to you. Because You are the tree of you kids. God bless you all. Thanks.
I love this idea that I'm the "tree of the kids." What an amazing way of putting it. Thank you @pipoly.
When my kids were growing up, I really struggled with feeling like I was a good mom because I just could not "play" with them. I realized at some point, that I do/did spend a LOT of time with them, talking, creating things, learning things and making things... but just playing wasn't my thing.
Hugs were often barely tolerable for me, but I tried. I am known as the 'non-hugs' person by pretty much everyone, but I must admit that I still feel guilty when my kids/pseudo kids want a real hug. I willingly give them hugs, but sometimes it feels like pure torture to me and I hope that I'm good enough at hiding it. :/
Parenting with these blocks is so hard sometimes. I really really appreciate you sharing your own journey. It helps. And, for what it's worth, my kids all still love hugs, love spending time with me and we've all just talked and respected each other enough to know which things are "our things" (Ie: My son takes me out for dinner or will even bring steaks over and cook for me, since he also knows that I don't like leaving the house often. But he loves movies, so he'll take his dad or his sisters out for a movie for 'their time' and will just come over to talk to me a few times a week so we can have some time together.
Each of them has found their own way to relate to me, to their dad and to their siblings. This living... raising kids and growing up is just a wonderful mess sometimes.
I think what your daughter did, wanting to wear the ears to be there for her friend was so byeond beautiful. You are raising a seriously compassionate little girl there and that brought tears to my eyes.
And your daughter with her own discord? That is so cool as well. You're obviously a wonderful, encouraging mama. I love all of this.
@byn ... leaving novel length comments because this post made me appreciate you and also remember so many things of my own!!!
Your novel length comments make me jump up and down in excitement @byn. Not even kidding. I feel like we are making a genuine connection here, and this is the internet where things rarely seem real. But your openness is is such a beautiful reflection of my own self-assessments, I am reminded that there is much good even when it isn't obvious. I'm not sure I can quantify the value of realizations like that, of not feeling alone in the struggle and seeing that there is joy ahead. Thank you for sharing of yourself.
Truly a blessing. Wishing you all the best.
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How fun! I loved reading the comments on your post!
Thank you!
Sadly while very much a part of my kids' upbringing...hard to say if I really felt like I "enjoyed" those years...nothing they did or didn't do...just where I was at with my and my spouse's reality back in time...glad to hear you can find the time and mind set to appreciate certain moments...
I feel lucky to have a second chance with my grand kids...
I get it. It can be so hard to be present when other parts of life are happening around you. That second chance is lovely. I'm so happy for you!
This was such a wonderful post. I loved seeing and hearing about your children and their unique individual behaviors and personalities. They sound encouraged to be creative and self directed.
I laughed at my screen when you told the story about the "marriage" and the wand. Haha! Why not? Wands are powerful and useful.
My favorite part throughout the whole post was the story told through examples that gave insight into each "character" with specific actions they took. They were pleasurably descriptive without being too wordy or obscure. Thank you for sharing this piece of your life!
Thank you so much for this careful reading. I love the different aspects of my sweeties, too, and it's fun to know I've shared about them well.
I completely agree with the challenges of staying present with kids. There's so much to keep up with in a busy life that it's easy to fall in to "Get Stuff Done" mode and miss out on the quality of life.
Great post - Great reminder!
Thank you. It's wonderful to receive understanding. I've received judgement for sharing this type of thing before--as if, as a woman, being a mother is the only thing I can do to positively define my life. And if I'm not enjoying it, I'm doing it wrong. When the reality is it's hard work.
I think the fact that you have identified this as a challenge and are so honest about it, is great. Parenting is challenging, each one of our children are different and they all have their own personalities and ways of doing things, which is exciting and fascinating but can also be exhausting at times. I think it is so important to recognize that we do the best we can and that what we do is enough. Look how creative your 3 are that is great.And <i can hear how proud you are of them. Being able to identify any challenge is a blessing really because with that recognition can bring about change.
This gets my biggest nods and all the yeses:
Choosing to be honest about the challenges allows me to create goals based on them. And when you remind us that we are doing enough---I could cry. It never feels like it, somehow.
This is spectacular, thank you so much for sharing this! I have been struggling to enjoy my girls recently, but this morning when we were bagging our groceries at Aldi I actively chose to chuckle to myself (rather than hide in mortification) as Elizabeth tried really hard to convince everyone that was checking out near us that she had a poopy butt.
I mean, regardless of how "mature" we are, who doesn't like a good poop joke?
LOL. Those moments. In retrospect it's easy to smile. I love that you did it right then. Kids are hilarious, and when we get curious about their motivations, they are even more hilarious.
Wow!!! You have an amazing set of kids. They sure make you proud. You're such an amazing mom too because whatever they know and do is inspired by you. You encourage their dreams and interest and help them achieve it. I hope to be such a mom when the time comes. Thanks for sharing this post, I've really learnt a lot from it.
Such a pretty kid you have showing her capability in creativity.
She is a talented one as such. @shawnamawna.