This soccer season is a perfect example, with my rant on the whole All-Star team thing. I wanted her to have it and enjoy it all right away. How ignorant was I - I just read last night that Rep teams (oh yes, I was dreaming big) practice twice a week and then travel far and wide, like, all the time.
What is irresistible to me is not the toys or fancy clothes or concerts, etc. It is protecting them from uncomfortable situations, from pain, from rejection. I forget that adversity is what builds character and I catch myself dreaming of an undiscovered trick to implant values and life lessons into each of my children so that they don't have to "learn it the hard way".
My Little Girl needed to get cut from that All-Star team in her first year - because then she could focus on the fundamentals she was still learning about from one coach. And a fantastic one at that. And in the end, her house league team won the playoff championship, and she even scored some key goals throughout the week. This, however, only happened when Hubby and I shut up and stopped being backseat coaches. And like I said before, she didn't even care that she didn't make it to that All-Star team. I could learn something from that.
My heart is warm and fuzzy thinking about how badly Mom must have wanted to gift us with the In thing back then. After all, how easy is it to spend that kind of money in a month-and-a-half when you're raising six kids with a single income (bless you, Dad)?
Am I showing the parallel well enough? Ugh. I'm verbally constipated right now.
A lot of my friends and family who have kids are raising toddlers. The outlets at home are plugged, they hold table corners as the children pass, they feed them, and some of them still touch their poo. I think still being surrounded by that makes me forget that I'm already at the stage where my grip needs to be loosened on my own children, and shaping them is not so much about prevention anymore.
I just want to give the kiddies so much of all the right things. And to know how to get them.
