Poulsen-VanLear: May 2010

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

The secret world of parenting....take 1

The phrase “Older and Wiser” never made more sense. I feel like as I approach 30, I start to realize just how naïve I have been for most of my life. I touched on this subject in an earlier blog about my Mom making breakfast every morning for her girls. I took it for granted and never realized the time she sacrificed to do that, and the fact that making breakfast every morning was just one of the MANY things. Dad always gave me a hard time saying I owed him a week’s vacation for coming into this world late. I think back to all of the stories of my childhood and find that so many of them take on a new light. A week’s vacation is a LOT. He always laughed when he said it, but here I am counting up every last sick and vacation day I can to make sure I don’t give birth and then leave the hospital and go straight to work!

I talked today with a lady at work about her child getting ready for college. Her daughter wants the same things all girls at her age want…to live at the cool apartments, to go to school in an awesome place even though it may be 17 hours away and twice the cost, and to look at majors that aren’t necessarily practical for actually getting a job post college. I remember being so idealistic back then…dragging my parents on a 34-hour road trip to visit Kansas State only to pick JMU. “Following my heart” which caused me to switch majors in my senior year from something practical to something philosophical. I found myself discussing how idealistic “kids” are. I realized I was that too not so long ago…making the big decisions based on emotion and not logic. I look back and am glad I did so because it has made me who I am today. But I realize that my parents knew all along…they were older and wiser and knew things might have been easier if the logical decision would have been made. But they also knew those are the decisions that shape us and therefore, offered nothing but support.

The biggest realization I am currently having is how every parent I have ever talked to says you don’t truly know love until you have looked into the eyes of your child. So many moms say that it was amazing to have their own heart made human and now living outside of their body. I can’t imagine what that will be like. And yet I see that this fact, like so many of the other things I am just taking off the blinders to see, will likely be how I, too, feel. My worry now is whether I can become wiser quick enough to tell my child the right things….to offer support instead of trying to convince them otherwise. To know when to bite my tongue and let them figure it out on their own. While I thought I had become wiser learning that is it better to "put it out there" than risk miscommunication, I feel like I am just discovering the secrets my parents have had and that made them so good at parenting. When does this knowledge come? I need it and now. I hope this all comes with the moment of birth….along with some unexpected vacation days I might have missed in calculation :) Because I know once I do lay eyes on the little person I made with the man I love…no amount of time off will be enough. I have a feeling a lot of that needed knowledge will fall into place when I see him for the first time and know that all I could ever do is love and support him in whatever his heart desires.