Tuesday, 1 September 2015

Reflections on parenting and childhood

This weekend I was reflecting on my family and my children. I love them very much even though they often do things that drive me crazy sometimes. As I was thinking about those particular things that drive me nuts I realized that I remember doing many of them when I was their age.

For instance, one thing that my father always got after me for was dragging my feet when I walked. I'll be honest, when I was a kid, I never noticed that I dragged my feet and I had no idea what he was talking about when he told me to stop. As an adult, I am acutely aware of when my children drag their feet, particularly when they are outside.

Angel and I am constantly frustrated by Tigger's predisposition to push buttons and take thinks apart. He does it to see how things work - he's experimenting - and it drives us crazy because it tend to break things. We're down our blu-ray player because he was messing with the drawer. He will also ignore us when we tell him not to touch things. But it wasn't until I saw him walk up to something and push a button just to see what it would do that it occurred to me that I still have a tendency to do that. I'm incurably curious and love to see how things work. In short, he is just like me. What's hard with him now that I've realized what and why he's doing it is not to squash his curiosity but also to keep him from accidentally breaking anything.

There are a few others, but, of course, I can't remember any as I write this. I also try to keep these revelations to myself. This is in the interest of self preservation as Angel tends to look at me rather severely when I confess to doing things my kids do. Luckily for me, she will sometimes confess to seeing herself in our kids as well. In those confessionals we invariably smile and say, "So, it's your fault."

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