Category: Parenting/Shepherding

Have you ever experienced amnesia?  You only have amnesia if you know something and forget it.  And it feels worse when you really, really know something and you forget it . . . like last weekend when I experienced a case of parenting or relationship-building amnesia.  And I believe that parenting is first and foremost about building great relationships and modeling them for our children. Because it offered me an opportunity for personal growth and reminded me of how basic skills really are in building quality relationships, I am going to be painfully transparent in this article.

Yesterday my husband and I had nursery duty at our church.  It is a wonderful nursery filled with toys that I found myself wishing I had known about even five years ago for our grandchildren. This time there was only one absolutely adorable 20 month old girl to watch.  When it came time for her mommy to say “good bye” there were those inevitable tears.  Fortunately for us, her big sister and mom had pulled out toys of interest to her.  I took great advantage of that!  Tears stopped when the door closed and toys were dancing before her eyes. 

This summer I have been thinking a lot about roots and wings.      As you already know, I have been fascinated by hummingbird wings. It has reawakened memories. When I was a child struggling with low self-esteem, I daydreamed about what it would be like to have wings like birds and butterflies. Interestingly, my night dreams were often filled with flying and my arms were efficient wings. My flights were smooth and it was wonderful.  If you have never had a flying dream you are missing out on a treat. It elicits an amazing sense of power and freedom.

He is six years old and proudly tells you so. As with all children, I learn so much about life and about myself from him.  This time a couple of lessons came from watching him play a game of balance.  A Wii game for him, a metaphor for me. It happened a couple of weeks ago, but two lessons from the incident linger. The first came about by watching him face personal failure. Watching an overtired child cave under the self imposed pressure of success was like looking into an invisible mirror. To make matters worse, he had declared loudly

I know it sounds strange.  You might say, “Duh! Of course parents are people!” But many times once we become a parent we don’t accept ourselves as a real person.  Suddenly we become “mother” or “father” and are filled with “should know this” and “should do that” and/or ” should never say or do this or that!”  We put unbelievable pressure on ourselves to be perfect.  (What  a way to squelch our joy and feel like a failure!)   Most of the parents I know and love seem to suffer from too much self-condemnation. After all, it IS a huge