Being
a mother isn’t the easiest job in the world. There is there no effective
guidebooks covering everything so you are pretty much doing just about every
single job you can think of all at once. You are also on duty twenty-four/seven
from the time you have your first child until the day you die.
As
a mother I think the hardest part is raising well-adjusted, capable, human
beings. That alone takes a great deal of effort and you’re almost completely on
your own.
There are tons of books out there on parenting. And there will
probably be lots more. And it would be easy to find parenting books that didn’t
agree with each other, or with tips and ideas that really don’t work for your
family.
Why?
I’m
going to repeat myself now. No two people are exactly alike. You can’t find
answers in books because there isn’t anybody else exactly like “Jonny”.
Don’t
get me wrong. Those parenting books can help. Glean what you can from them, but
because each child is an individual, you just have to figure out each of your
children to know what works and doesn’t work with them and for your family.
That’s
the hard part, and time consuming.
You
spend twenty or thirty years putting all your time and effort into raising
these kids, hoping for the best, praying they turn out okay and then just
waiting to see the end results. That’s all you can do, wait and see how it all
turns out.
You
watch them as they grow up and always wonder if you are doing things right. If
maybe you should handle something differently.
They
go through their rough spots, their teenage rebellion, and you’re positive you’re
not doing it right. They have problems in school or making friends and you
wonder what else you can do or what you did wrong. It never gets easier because
every bump in the road you wonder what you did wrong and what you need to
change to make things better.
But
dealing with another human being means they have a roll in how things turn out
too so you can never tell what the outcome will be. With your first born you
could just take away the TV, but your second born doesn’t mind spending hours
alone in their room. Each child is different. So it’s hit and miss, a learn as
you go experience, raising kids.
But
one things for sure they are probably not going to come right out and tell you
how to raise them or that you are doing things right. That’s why you have to
wait and see how they turn out.
My
children are getting to the age where I can start to see how they are going to
turn out. My oldest will be getting married soon and her two sisters are in college.
(My boys are in high school.)
But
the real test is seeing how they do raising their own kids. We’re clearly not
there yet.
But
the other day I had two separate conversations with my two daughters still at
home. I don’t remember how either one started other than I was driving each one
somewhere, or really what we were talking about to begin with. I also know that
I never mentioned my first conversation to the second girl.
But
at some point both my daughters said, “You got it right, Mom.”
I
raised them right. I did a good job. Made my day.
Oh,
and Happy Flag Day.
Smile.
Make the day a brighter day.
