Children are Hard

 

Every stage is the hardest, especially with your first, and you've never done it before.

- Babies are so helpless and dependent on you 28 hours a day and what if you mess up?

- Toddlers are willful and 'no' and don't listen and can barely communicate and have so much energy. How can you possibly keep up?

- School-age kids are learning so much and exposed to the world and all it's heartbreak and depth of possibilities. How do you protect and support them?

- Preteens are so busy with themselves and their circle and activities and so many things. How do you guide them in the right direction?

- Teens are changing so fast and so sure they don't need you and they know everything. How can you stay important in their lives?

- Young adults are going out on their own and have to do it themselves and learning how to manage it themselves and you can't do it for them. How can you help but still encourage their independence?

- And then they aren't dependent on you, and you don't need to keep up, and they can protect themselves, and they've got their own direction, and they decide what's important, and they are independent. And they become your friend instead of your child, and everything else was completely worth it.

Sticks Don't Hit People

 

The problem is that neither of these is the answer to the problem. If you take the stick away from the bully, he'll just pick up a rock or something else and continue his aggression. If you give every kid a stick, now you're teaching them all to be violent.

Customize Yourself

 

We customize our cars, our houses, our water bottles, our online profiles, our offices... everything around us gets that special touch to identify it as ours. So why not our bodies? I mean, we start young with developing our own clothing style. Then it's hairstyle and jewelry. Maybe hair color, hair cut, body piercings.

Grandpa Bear

Let me tell you about the birthday present I got this year that almost-but-didn't-quite make me cry. When I was tiny, I got a large stuffed bear from my grandparents. I've held onto him for something like 46 years now. Here's baby me with my Grandpa Bear. Given the pictures near this one where I found it in a scrapbook, I was very close to my second birthday. In fact, that might have been a birthday present. There's a cake with two candles in the next picture.

Good Enough is... Good Enough (Job Hunting)

In one of my online discussion spots, there is someone asking advice about job hunting - about cover letters and interviews and convincing someone to hire them. So here we are, and I'm going to sum up some of my part of the advice with something I wish I'd been taught.

You don't have to sell yourself as a Star. 

You can just be Good Enough.

See, I was a Gifted Kid(TM). I was always told that I could be a star at whatever I wanted to do. I was put on the path of greatness and told I had to go as far as I could go. I was gonna be better! I was going to change the world! My future included being the CEO or President of something, a name everyone knew, someone everyone looked up to. 

That's Just How I Am: Two Takes

 

Unless you phrase it differently. Rather than 'that's just how I am; take it or leave it', try on 'I like being this way; it's okay if you don't like it'. I'm weird, and I know it. But it's not that I'm unwilling to change in ways that correct my flaws; instead it's more that I have accepted and embraced my differences and realized that they aren't flaws. They may not be to your taste, and that's okay; you don't have to like me. But I do like me, and the people I chose to keep around me do like me and my weirdnesses. You can choose to be part of that circle or not, and neither choice is wrong.

Now obviously, I'm not talking about the toxic traits that are bad for you and the people around you. I'm just responding to that first line. If there are toxic traits about you, you need to recognize and correct them. For your own sake.