I saw this article posted on a friend's facebook page and just had to say "Amen" to it. I try to tell myself that I often don't enjoy the daily drudgery of parenting because we haven't parented our kids from Day 1 and therefore we face many different challenges, than my friends who started out the "traditional" way. But I think parenting is just hard. And if we hold on to the "Kairos" moments that happen each day, the joys of parenting will shine through some of those challenging moments.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/glennon-melton/dont-carpe-diem_b_1206346.html
I need to
remember that, especially now, as we are daily confronting the learning
challenges of our children. My meeting with AJ's teacher last week
revealed he's no where near on track with his classmates and the girls are
struggling with their course work also. Retention is the main problem and
many of my friends/clients with kids from 'hard places' are telling me the same
thing about their kids. Reasoning, problem solving, retention: all things
that come from proper brain development of the frontal lobe during a child's
first 3 years of life. If a child experiences any trauma (lack of
prenatal care, traumatic birth, early hospitalization, abuse,
neglect, malnourished) during the first 3 years of their lives, the
development of that frontal lobe is going to be a bit off. Not that it
can't be restored and healing come, it just takes intentional parenting.
And let me tell you, intentional parenting is exhausting. And well
meaning people keep encouraging us to try this teaching technique or spend more
time reading with our kids, etc. I have to tell you, my kids do more
'homework' than almost any other family I know of. We have private tutors
and spend time every night reading to and having our kids read to us. All of my
kids are getting extra assistance at school (though that's another tangent I
could go down but won't right now) and I have several 'school help' websites
bookmarked and we use these often. They don't watch TV or play video
games during the weekly (usually) but there comes point where I shut the books
and tell them, "go outside and play". They are kids after all.
I just find it so hard to balance the pressures of academia with the
necessity of just being kids. And as parents, we put more pressure on
ourselves than anyone to have our kids "succeed". Well, I need
to get to the grocery store to fret over how much money I'm spending to provide
healthy foods to help my kids' brain development. =) At least it will get my mind of school woes, right? I'll leave you with
a picture of my cuties who woke me up at 6am (an hour before they need to get
up) this morning because they wanted to wear their "tight pants &
tutus" to school today.
ps. Thanks for all the comments regarding the fort from my last post. You helped rebuild my mommy self esteem. =)
