I was just sitting on my bed a few minutes ago looking over a couple of websites. My son and youngest daughter were playing video games. They began as usual arguing. I began to reprimand them and then remembered what a friend of mine said about raising her own kids. As long as they were fighting, they were learning to interact and would in the end be closer for it. I bit my tongue and prayed she was right. It wasn't like they were knocking out teeth or something so drastic. They were just bickering.
I tried to hide myself in the virtual world as it continued. No telling how bad it would be if their older sister was there. Then out of the clear blue, the bickering stopped. Victoria was giggling to the point that I thought she would wet her pants. Gasping, she told her brother, "You make me laugh." They both broke into a fit of giggles.
In an effort to have my children be just like me as I grew up and for me to handle things exactly like my mother, I was not allowing them to be themselves or me to be me. Life has its conflicts. How else are they going to learn to solve them? They have to work it out themselves. I don't want to be the meddlesome mother who has to dictate every aspect of their life. I want them to be strong confident adults and unknowingly I was holding them back from doing just that.
We all need to step back and re-evaluate how we handle things. We need to see if we are too blinded by the forest to see the individual young saplings trying to reach the sky. How blind could we be in our own lives!
I'm thankful God has placed people in my life who are not controlling or bossy, but help pass on words of wisdom just by the actions in their own lives. Thank you, Kathy.
No comments:
Post a Comment