Tips from the Trenches: A Guide to Practical Parenting

My 2-year old is turning into a tyrant about wanting to walk EVERYWHERE and it's been making me nuts, including today as we were taking about 45 minutes to walk from our apartment to the pool (a 10 minute walk, max).

Now, I know this is not a new thought, but I realized about 35 minutes in to the journey that Emma was getting a lot more out of life that I was. Bugs. Birds. Sticks. Shadows. Trees. Spiders. Dragonflies.

All I was thinking about was getting to the pool so we could leave in time to buy milk, then get home for dinner, bath, and bed. I had no great plans after that other than to crash after a particularly trying day.

I suddenly noticed that the things that had been making me crazy all day long could be easily acceptable if I appreciated the journey more.

Parenting (and many other parts of life) is this way, we have landmarks in our mind....sleeping through the night, sitting, crawling, walking, talking, preschool, Kindergarten, middle school, graduation, college, marriage, children, etc. Whew! What a lot of expectations we have. What a boring life. We hit the same landmarks eventually.

If we look at the destinations only, the only thing we have to note is the difference in timing. "Jack walked at 15 months." "Emma walked at 18 months." "Jack slept through at 3 months." "Emma still won't sleep through at 2." Suddenly, this breeds an odd off-shoot of competition, comparison, and unease. Yuck! What an absolutely horrible way to live.

So, I'm going to make a better effort to appreciate the journey AND the destination. Sadly, I'm pretty set in my ways, but they say that knowing makes all the difference and I hope that will be true in this case.