- Kids need structure.
- Rules matter.
- Adults need healthy boundaries, too, in their own lives.
- Little helpful things matter--an hour joining a beach cleanup on the Sound in Connecticut with your Auntie, for instance. It matters.
- Healthy stuff matters. Filling your bike tires, wearing your helmet, biking to town. It’s empowering for a child.
- Cooking is good. A can-do skill to have in your hip pocket.
Gnite.
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co-sign. Humans thrive with the right degree of order, rules, yet autonomy to make decisions (and mistakes) and downtime to muse and dream and create. At every age. but first comes the foundation of structure and order. And healthy stuff...so important. I use to refer to it as "wholesome" stuff: learning to cook, learning a skill, creating a thing (a figure out of clay, a play out of dress-up), taking care of things, a job well done. I did a lot of this, but I didn't always do it well or enough. That's human, too, I guess.
ReplyDeleteGood morning, Kim. We are both up early today with our comments! Thanks for the insights. I admire you and F. as parents--I like to have parent role models. That helps, too. I remember M. would bike around Long Island in the summer and pick berries....it looks like our Punch/Skipper will be back with us as of next Saturday or next Monday. Will text with you and our think tank. (I will always remember M. roasting a duck, and the two of you (?) making palmiers from Ina’s cookbook.)
DeleteI’m considering getting Skip back into horse riding. It’s a very $ exp sport, and Dan balks at that, but we could surely do one lesson a week.
She likes helping animals.
And--"didn’t always do it well or enough.” Again, role models for me. I think we all do our best in the moment. That is all we can do. Think fast, think slow, be present, manage as best we can.
I’ve come to terms with the fact that teenagers have been challenging to their parents since forever? Or was it the 1920s more officially? Love Alice
I've come to realize that some kids (like M, maybe Punch), would have done better with a little more "farm life"--make the candles, see you have helped the family read at night. Milk the cow--see, thanks to you, we can drink milk.
ReplyDeleteI “did” horses in middle school years. It is terrific. But also- maybe investigate local animal shelters to see if they take junior volunteers? My girl and I did - I had to be with her. Tasks included playing with the dogs in outside runs, sitting with puppies crawling over you, and sitting and reading to frightened dogs in their kennels to calm them. No matter how tense we were going there, she always left with a smile. I know it’s tough with the pandemic, though. I discovered there are also much smaller, all volunteer, dog rescues, and they are likely to be less bureaucratic about junior volunteers. Just a thought.
ReplyDeleteNan, that is a great idea. Will pursue. Thanks. Love Alice
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