A Mother's Gifts

Mothers are on our minds this week as Mother's Day approaches. My mother is often in my thoughts too, as I remember her gentle ways, warm laughter, and soft hugs. She was, probably like your mother, special in my life. The gifts she gave weren't usually the material kind because money was not something she had to give. Hers were gifts of love and caring.

That made me think about the kinds of gifts parents can give to their children, the kind that are kept forever and appreciated most. As I look back to my sons and their childhood, I realize that they probably have very few material gifts from me because, like my mother, money wasn't abundant in our household. I tried instead to give them what I thought might be valuable to them later, things they could carry with them wherever they went, and could pass down to their own children.

Here is my list of gifts that can last for a lifetime:

1. Unswerving faith in their abilities to do whatever they set themselves to do.

2. Freedom to make choices and decisions, even if we do not agree with them.

3. Responsibility for their choices and decisions.

4. Confidence in their abilities.

5. Support in bad times, applause and shared joy in the good.

6. Advice only when asked.

7. Understanding that the advice is a suggestion and may not be taken.

8. Memories of the family's past.

9. The ability to laugh, especially at themselves.

10. Compassion and empathy for others.

11. Acceptance of differences in philosophy, politics, religious beliefs, and lifestyle. We raise them to be independent, right?

12. Unquestioning love in abundance for our children, and for their spouses and children.

There are probably many more things that could be added to this list. What do you consider the most valuable gifts you have given to your children, as either father or mother?

The Clean Plate Club

Yesterday I went out to lunch because I had a headache, my peanut butter sandwich didn't appeal and I wanted a break. What I ordered was good (a turkey-dill omelet) but not quite to my liking--there was something sweet in it although I never discovered what it was.

But being raised to eat everything on my plate, I ate it all. And told the waitress it was good. Why? Because I've been a lifelong member of The Clean Plate Club. I am betting there are quite a few members of the same club who read this blog.

Rules for membership in this not-so-exclusive club are simple. You were born sometime between 1945 and 1970; your parents or grandparents remember the Great Wars and/or the Great Depression. You were one of the babies born to replace the men killed in the war (thus the Baby Boom generation). Your family ate dinner at a specified time, together, every day.

You probably had some dinner rules similar to those that governed our evening meal:

1. Children should be seen and not heard
2. Children should not speak unless spoken to
3. Children should eat everything on their plate!

And with that last rule was born the Clean Plate Club.

To this day I follow Rule #3. I feel uncomfortable when I scrape something off my plate into the trash (starving children in China rise up before my eyes), and I feel guiltily wasteful (do I think money grows on trees?) and like I've been inconsiderate of someone's feelings (someone slaved over a hot stove to prepare that food).

Are there any members of the Club out there? Raise your hands!

Homecoming

Tommy is home at last from Germany! Tonight we picked him up at the airport. Jared and Haley waited impatiently to see the uncle who is not much older than they are (Haley is 12, Jared 16, and Tommy is 21).
















He looks great--fit, built and happy to be home. What a joy to see his face again--even though we spoke on the phone every week, there is nothing to compare with seeing someone you love in person. (yeah, he's stooping over his two short parents!)





Jared, Hannah and Tommy--what a difference a few years makes in a kid's size. Hannah is such a little bird. Jared is actuall about 2 inches taller than Tom, although it doesn't show here.


Now everyone is settled down for the night. Air mattresses have been inflated, the stove and fireplace loaded for the night, blankets, sheets and pillows found, lights out. The house is quiet and I can think about having our youngest son home again.



I wonder how he'll find the adjustment from Air Force barracks to a very quiet, solitary house in the country. He was raised here, but off and on for the past few years has been living in other places where there is a lot more people and activity. Here, he'll see the occasional deer, plenty of birds, the dogs, and the mailman and school bus passing on the road a quarter of a mile away. That's pretty much it for a day's activity.


He has plans, of course. College, a job, maybe an apartment. So his stay here is likely to be limited. We'll enjoy having him for this time, and I sort of think he'll enjoy getting out again when he gets his ducks lined up. He's tried a few things already--a short college stint, welding, driller, the Air Force. Always his passion was fitness, and now he's determined to make that his career. How? Stay tuned...

Let Your Kids Play with Dangerous Things?

Climbing in trees--probably a dangerous thing for children to do too! Haley is a champ at it, and regularly scales the apple tree in my yard.

It takes a brave man to make such a statement, but Gever Tulley, founder of the Tinkering School, says exactly that--let your kids play with dangerous things.

Recently on the NPR radio show Car Talk, an adoptive mother wondered about turning her 5 adopted children loose to take apart an old, non-functioning car. The kids, she said, loved to take things apart. A car could keep them busy for months. The Car Guys advised on the side of caution and safety, but even I could hear their creative brains exploring all the possbilities of the idea. Turn kids lose to disassemble a car? What a concept!

Tulley's"dangerous things" are everyday occurrences for kids who live in the country. Pocket knives? No self-respecting male in West Virginia is without one (and a lot of us females carry them too). At a family reunion a few years ago, someone needed a pocket knife to cut some strong. Who had the knives? The three West Virginians present.

Another dangerous thing: fire. Most country kids have built bonfires or campfires, lit a wood stove or a kerosene lamp. Fire is not dangerous, it's a tool to be used properly.

At 12, almost all of my sons had driven a tractor or a truck. They had to or else the hay didn't get in the barn or the tobacco hauled from the field. Driving wasn't the dangerous part, but navigating across our steeply sloping land--now that will give your adrenaline a boost.

Taking stuff apart was routine. They could take three broken bikes and make two sort of functional ones (okay, so one bike might not have brakes, but they had feet, didn't they? and it made going down hill a fast affair).

Operate power tools? If they didn't they wouldn't be able to get through the to-do lists I left them. Throw spears? Yesterday a grandson used his pocket knife to sharpen a stick and practiced throwing for an hour, trying to figure out how to get his spear to stick into the ground. We watched, advised on how to best sharpen and throw the stick. Dangerous? It could be. But with adults nearby, a large open field with no other children in sight, it was hardly as dangerous as swinging in a crowded playground.

Tulley is right--in many ways we over-protect our children, thereby keeping them from learning valuable life skills, developing the self-confidence to try out new things, learning that failure happens sometimes, and finding those critical thinking and problem-solving skills so sought after in today job marketplace.

Danger is part of life. We can teach kids to be careful too. Will they get hurt sometimes? Certainly. But the same parents who won't allow a child to steer a car or operate a power drill think nothing of allowing the same child to ride a four-wheeler or a skateboard, play football or other violent contact sports--sources of high levels of childhood injuries.

What has happened is that what we view as dangerous has shifted. We watch grown men pound each other on TV and don't consider the danger of the sport. We provide helmets for bikes and four-wheelers and assume children wearing the helmets wil be safe. We let coaches decide if a play or a move is safe. We give in to demands for skateboards and other toys because "all the other kids have them."

We forget that our children need to learn practical skills that will help them throughout their life, and we forget that most important of all, we need to be there to guide them along the way--not doing things for our children, but letting them do things themselves and see the result of their work.

Raising kids is inherently dangerous. Raising thinkers, planners and doers is downright difficult. But when we see our teenager figure out that how to charge a car battery, then get in and drive away--ah, that's priceless.