There are about 14 steps from my little girls’ room to the living room. Every weekday morning, around 6:00 a.m., I head to their room. Taking turns, I wrap each girl in their blanket and carry them out to the living room. They are heavy with sleep. But in small ways they snuggle into my arms; an arm around my neck, moving their head onto my chest, or curling up into the fetal position to fit in my arms.
The girls are five and four years old. I can shake them awake. They could walk to the living room. They find their way to our room at two in the morning, that’s for sure. But it is 14 steps. It is 14 steps that I will, soon enough, not walk with them in my arms. They will grow and be too heavy with age to carry. It is 14 steps that I can show them that dad loves them.
Some of our greatest moments are the smallest. What can you do today in 14 steps? Find that path and watch how the world looks better in just 14 steps.
My youngest daughter, in fact all my children, continue to show me life lessons. Every morning my two youngest daughters get a breakfast bag to take with them in the car.
As the girls get their hair done, shoes on, they start eating their breakfast. This morning we were rolling with our normal routine when my youngest daughter placed her bag on the edge of the side table spilling her breakfast.
I took a few seconds to collect myself so that I wouldn’t just have a knee jerk reaction. I looked at the ceiling, took a breath, and prepared to clean up the mess. As I turned back to my daughter I was surprised to see her simply picking up her breakfast. I bent down and helped her pick up the spilled cereal and Pop-tarts.
Honestly, I was prepared to ask her to help or even do it myself. But there she was handling the situation. Something we, as parents, have tried to instill in all our children. As we cleaned up together, I thought to myself how I didn’t trust my own parenting. I was, again, quick to think that I would have to handle the situation. But my little girl proved me wrong.
Trust. What a tricky concept. Especially in this situation. To trust myself. To trust the foundation we have been building for our children. My oldest son will be a seventh grader next year. The teen years will be in full force in our home. I know I will make mistakes. I know my son will make mistakes. But this morning my youngest daughter showed me that it is not just trusting others, but having the courage to trust the foundation I build.
I will be honest, that is a scary thought because as a parent we want to have a sense of control. Just like the old adage “If you want it done right, do it yourself.” But the problem is that we can’t live another person’s life, even if it is our children’s lives (or our students). We have to trust we have built a strong foundation and let them show we can trust them to stand on that foundation.
Last night I had two examples as a dad on the importance of listening and hearing my children. The first was my oldest son at the dinner table. It wasn’t anything world changing, but he had a rough day at school. My wife and I sat listening to him vent about the day’s activities. We didn’t try to solve all the problems but did give advice. Mostly though, we just let him talk about his frustrations. By the time supper had ended life was pretty good for him. He had been heard and knew that we understood what was going on, even if we didn’t have concrete answers for him. The second example wasn’t so easy. My littlest girl got up at about 12:30 a.m. and we did our routine of getting a drink and sitting in the chair for a few minutes. And then things got a little tough. At the moment a part of her bedtime routine is to spend a few minutes in bed with us and then she will say, “I’m ready for bed.” But at 12:30 she wanted to get into bed before she went back to her room. I wanted to make sure that my wife got a good nights sleep, so I told her we would just go to bed or sit in the chair for a few extra minutes. She wasn’t up to that and started throwing a fit about how she wanted to “sleep with mom.” Somewhere I had read that the best thing to do with a child who is throwing a fit is to ignore them. But if you have a strong-willed child you know that they will pay any consequence. And even as hard as I tried, she just continued to throw a fit and scream about how she wanted to sleep in our bed. Trying to keep my cool, I reinforce that she was being disrespectful by being loud and waking other people up. That didn’t help. After about 30 minutes or so she moved from sitting on the chair to sitting next to me trying to gain my attention. I was getting frustrated but had one of those father moments where you try something totally new because nothing else was working; I turned to her and said, “I hear you but you are throwing a fit and that is not right.” As soon as I had replied that I had heard her, she quieted down and sat next to me. I again tried to persuade her that she didn’t need to lay down in our bed this late at night. But that set her off. I again replied that I heard her, and she settled down. (A side note here: we have been reinforcing saying please and thank you.) Well, after a few minutes she asked if she could lay down with a please attached. Yes, I gave in, and within five minutes of laying down she was ready to go to bed and she slept through the rest of the night. I had never responded with the I hear you comment to her before, and as I came back to bed after getting her snug in her bed I started to think about a piece of literature that reinforce the importance of hearing children. So I’m going to go English teacher here. If you’ve ever read the book The Outsiders then you know that there is a powerful moment in the book when Johnny is talking about his parents. I don’t have a copy of the book with me right now so I will paraphrase, but he is telling Ponyboy that the worst thing that his parents do to him is ignore him. Johnny can take the beatings, but when his parents act as if he is not there, it hurts him. It’s not just our children or students but everybody wants to be heard. They want to know that they have a voice and that voice gives them solid ground to stand on in this world. When our voice is actually heard, it means we are known. We know we matter. Life will sometimes reinforce the importance of things through my children. Yesterday it was how important it is to hear individuals around us whether they are our children, our students, or anyone who might need us to hear them.
It is all Connected 