I spend a lot of time wondering if I’m doing it right.
And by ‘it’, I mean parenting.
Why do they speak to me like that? I never did that. Why do they fight so much? Ok, I might have fought with my brother *a little*. Why don’t they listen? Why don’t they clean their rooms? Or eat their dinners? Feed the dog? Put the toys away? Roll their eyes?
Maybe I’m not any good at this after all.
Sometimes that heavy feeling descends. I close my eyes and struggle not to buckle under the weight of it.
Other days I get mad, determined to change it all. They will put their shoes away. They won’t whine. They will eat those green beans.
But then there is a whisper. Like a soft wind lifting my hair from my ear.
If I wasn’t listening yesterday, I might have missed it.
I sat in church next to an older woman and her grown son. The son sat at the edge of the pew rocking back and forth, unable to make eye contact. As I directed my four and six year old children through the mass, she did the same, reminding him to kneel, to stand, to pray.
As the hour drew to a close, she turned to Cooper and started to chat with him…..this was their conversation,
“What is your name?”
“Cooper.”
“How old are you, Cooper?”
“I’m four.”
“Wow, four. That’s big. (big smile from Coop) Cooper, this is my son, Gary.”
“Hi, Gary.”
“Gary has problems.”
(I held my breath, afraid of what might spring from my four-year old’s mouth)
Cooper smiled. Reached out for her hand. Shrugged his itty-bitty shoulders.
“That’s ok, everybody has problems”
I exhaled.
Sometimes the whisper is all I need. And the green beans and the sibling fighting suddenly don’t matter.
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