Parenting is hard. And anyone who tells you differently is either lying or doesn’t care. There are good days, bad days, terrible moments and every once in a while you have a brief moment where you think “man, I think I might have cracked the code on how to be a good parent.” I have had two of these moments in the past two weeks and need to document them here to remind myself that I do sometimes know what I am doing. Especially when, hypothetically, one of my children decides to subsequently have an hour-long breakdown over the lack of mandarins for dessert or the fact that their face painting was ruined due to their tears and I didn’t know what to do. Hypothetically, of course.
Proud Mom Moment with Alva: Alva has been making some great improvements in BMX but Martin still runs besides her on the track for support and encouragement. There was one day a few weeks ago that Martin kept “encouraging her” to not use the brakes but the approach didn’t seem to help. During a break I talked with Alva and explained to her what Martin was trying to do and asked if she wanted him to say a different phrase for encouragement. We decided on “unicorn princess power.” The rest of the day, Martin ran beside her yelling “unicorn princess power” and each time he did, she managed to not touch the brakes, leaving Martin chasing behind. It might not seem like a lot, but her whole demeanor changed and her confidence increased. It was so noticeable that Martin even said thank you at the end of the day and said the talk and suggestion was a really good one. If you didn’t already know, Martin is not one with flowery words so this was a big one for me.
Proud Mom Moment with Oskar: Oskar has really gotten into reading books at night in bed on his own. And it is so fun watching him just devour each and every story and ask for more. I have been trying to get him to start reading more chapter books or longer stories to help develop his skills and broaden his options. He had apparently mentioned to Martin that the chapter books we had were too hard for him. So one night we read two chapters together from the Hardy Boys series. During the second chapter I stopped every once in a while to confirm if he knew what a word meant. Come to find out he didn’t know some of them which was what probably was leading to the “hard” issue. On the spot I came up with a solution. When we were done reading together, I gave him a pencil. He could underline any word he didn’t know during his quiet time reading alone in bed and after 15 minutes I would come back in and we could go through any underlined words. Coming back to his bedroom after those 15 minutes was amazing. He had underlined a handful of words and we were able to sound them out and explain what they meant. He seemed so much more confident at the end. And the next day, he asked to do the same thing with Martin and a German chapter book.
