Korin, that is a wonderful poem, it brings tears to my eyes.

When my daughter was little she used to walk so close to me that I was constantly tripping over her. I found myself constantly telling her to walk beside me and not so close. Well she kept almost walking infront of me and then one day I raised my voice and told her that she had to stop walking so close/almost in front of me and I asked why did she do that. My daughter looked up and said to me "It is because I love you and I need to be close to you". Well it melted my heart and I still remember that day.

We often get very busy with our daily routine and our children sometimes seem like they get in our way and sometimes don't listen or make a mess. Sometimes it seems so important that the house be clean and the shopping gets done and we can very easily become tired and stressed by keeping with a routine of just getting things done. And we often don't realize that there is really a young person in our presense that is more important than all the other things we feel are so necessary to be done.

Some day the children wont be there anymore, and the cleaning and busy time of keeping house will slow down, but it will always be there. And then you will turn and see how fast time went by and wonder if you really took enough time to be a part of your childs life. And what did you really teach that child? Did you teach that child that he/she is only at the bottom of a list? Did he/she learn that a clean house is the most important thing along with how one has to do a routine?

Without realizing it we often teach our children the responsibilities of adulthood by our standards. They may not clean or do things the way we want, but they are watching how we not only do it but how we stress over it. And eventually when they do it (even raise their own children) they will do it just like the parent.

It is so easy to fall in the trap of viewing children as entities that cause a mess for us to constantly clean after. And it is equally easy to also make the mistake of unknowingly sending messages of our displeasure of the constant task. And it is also easy to think that size means extra hands and should do's and know by now's in them, when even though there is size there is confusion and extra need.

It is was good that you asked the question, because by the way you asked it, you were falling into a trap, and somehow you knew it. But, you did ask the question and that means you DO want to be a good parent.

Open Eyes