Tag: life lessons

children, gratitude, loss of parent, motherhood, parenting

Fill the Bucket

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My Mom and me. I owe her all the beauty, humor and light in my life. The rest doesn’t matter because she showed me what love means. Even if you make a mistake or don’t succeed, if you have love in your life, you have everything you need.

Moms don’t really get the credit they deserve.  There isn’t actually any quantifiable way to say we are successfully raising our kids.  How much are we, as Moms, responsible for the successes and the failures of our kids?  At what point do we stop shaping our children’s outcomes and allow them to take personal responsibility for themselves and their own actions?  Even into adulthood, are Moms responsible when a grown child isn’t reaching their full potential?

I don’t have the answers.  I do know that motherhood can be extremely rewarding but mostly on an intrinsic level.  Sure, we have Mother’s Day but in general, our hard work and dedication is rarely recognized on an external level.  This really isn’t such a bad thing.  I believe life is about being your personal best and if the world sees it, great, and if it doesn’t, that’s okay, too.  All that really matters is how you, and you alone feel about the way you are living your life.  It also helps if on occasion, your kid says or does something that warms your heart.

Full Speed explained to me that he learned about ‘filling other people’s buckets’ at school.  Essentially, by acknowledging others, you ‘fill their bucket’ with kindness and appreciation.  He took these words to heart.  He told me as he walked over to meet me, that he shared with the crossing guard that he was a ‘really good crossing guard’.  Full Speed also plans to tell the lunch ladies on Monday that they are doing ‘a really great job.’

I may not get trophies or a big paycheck honoring the work I do as a mother, but after I listened to Full Speed I thought, “Wow, maybe I had a little something to do with the making of this remarkable kid.”

My bucket is full.

children, kids, motherhood, parenting

Snowfall

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Full Speed back when snow was not his friend

The turkey is gone, thanks has been given and now it’s time for more holiday cheer.  The positive to living in a warmer climate is that there is no snow for Christmas.  The negative is that there is no snow for Christmas.  It is awfully hard to drum up Christmas spirit when you’ve sent your boys to school in shorts all year.

I saw an ad on television where there were mounds and mounds of snow.  It brought back many midwestern memories and I was reminded of how much Full Speed hated snow as a little one.  When I would pick him up from preschool during winter the reports from teachers, besides the obvious won’t-sit-still-for-a-moment ones, were how he would cry in misery when it was time for outside recess.  If Mad Dog and I would attempt to pull him on a small sled around our yard, he would yelp in frustration as tears would freeze on his tiny, unhappy face.  Looking back I can actually say that the memory of it is kind of sweet.  Living through it was awful and yet time has dulled the sharp edges of Full Speed’s snow-covered tantrums.

What I realized is that if I can finally find the humor in Full Speed’s snow experience, maybe whatever challenges I face with him today will have the same result.

I guess into each life a little snow must fall and it’s up to us to find a way to shape it into something lighthearted…eventually.

children, gratitude, kids, mommyhood, motherhood, parenting, self-discovery

Watch and Learn

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I had taken the boys to the pool and sat back and watched as they energetically tackled the slide and sprinklers.  At the top of the slide are two attached water cannons.  When the slide gets crowded these cannons become quite popular.  A boy a good head taller approached T.Puzzle and attempted to yank the cannon from T.Puzzle’s grip.  I had to coach myself to stay put and let it unfold.  As much as I wanted to leap to his rescue I decided to see how T.Puzzle would handle it.  Turns out years of assertiveness training from his older brother paid off.  T.Puzzle stood his ground and as the older boy continued to try to intimidate him with words and a few swings of his arms, T.Puzzle didn’t budge.

I learned a valuable lesson.  The minute you stop trying to control something, especially the behavior or circumstances of your children, these are the moments when they begin to show you who they really are.  If you are really lucky they may show you something unexpected.  They may show you that bullies are only as powerful as you allow them to be and sometimes a four year old can handle a confrontation without hesitation.  That’s when you realize maybe you need to start taking notes from your kids instead of always insisting on being the one who is teaching.

children, kids, mommyhood, motherhood, parenting

Go Time

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Full Speed and T.Puzzle graciously congratulate the other team for their win. Good sportsmanship in action.

How do you know how far to push your kids?  If they were given complete control of their lives, especially in the case of my two boys, their days would consist of cookie consumption, marathon viewings of Transformers cartoons and endless hours glued to a computer or handheld electronic device.  So when one of them tells me that they don’t want to go to soccer practice, I don’t take it too seriously.

Looking back to my own childhood and the sports and hobbies I pursued, most of them didn’t ring true for me.  Softball was okay, volleyball was alright and guitar lessons were beyond my scope of muscial ability. 

I have no regrets that I didn’t pursue any of these things for longer than I did.   I did them more because that was what was expected of me and I’m no worse for the wear.  I learned about commitment, loyalty, teamwork and always finishing something you start.  These are good things.

I will continue to hold my boys to a higher standard than they hold for themselves for the forseeable future (with a marathon viewing of Transformers occasionally tossed in for good measure) and hope for the best.  

It’s not necessarily what they pursue with Mom and Dad’s encouragement, it’s about the lessons they learn while they pursue it.

Grab your cleats, boys.  It’s go time!

children, kids, mommyhood, motherhood, parenting

Park Politics

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Wise for their size.

Having spent spring break doing local things with my boys, we visited our share of parks. There was the park at the library, the park in our subdivision and the play area at the zoo.

My approach to the park experience, especially since the boys have mastered them in a physical sense, is to step back and let the social politics of parkdom unfold without intervening.

This is so much easier said than done.

Since the boys are older, they handle themselves well for the most part. There is less threat of spontaneous smack-downs so I can relax a little.

The part that I have to watch myself is if any of the other kids attempt to be mean to my boys. I find that sometimes even the quiet girls holed up in the cubby at the top of the slide use words that cut like daggers.

Here’s what one such little girl said to T.Puzzle when he tried to use the slide. “You can’t come up here. You can never be here while we are here. You have to go away forever!”

I heard some defensive words start to creep up my throat and as they almost toppled from my mouth, I bit my tongue and took a step back. As much as I was longing to intervene, I wanted T.Puzzle to handle it. j

He did. He sort stepped over the girl and her unfortunate minions, and slid away. T.Puzzle and Full Speed continued to ignore the girls and their ridiculous demands.

I learned a lot watching them.

The best way to handle mean people is to ignore them and live your life.

Spend time with the people who support you and slide away as fast as you can from the ones who don’t.