You will have to pardon me a bit of parental pride here. My kids are just awesome! As they have grown and started showing more and more of their own personalities and, really, as those personalities are being shaped by our lives and choices, I have been amazed by just how good they really are. Pardon me while I share a few recent examples that make me proud.
During Catherine’s sleep over, the girls were trying to pick a movie to watch. Catherine was standing in front of her friends holding several movies. Two of them were Scooby Doo movies that she really wanted to watch. She held up the first SD movie and said “Raise your hand if you want to watch this movie”. All but one girl raised their hand (including Catherine). Catherine looked at the one who didn’t want to watch it and I waited for her to say something to the effect of “Tough luck, majority rules”. Instead, Catherine very politely said, we’ll the vote is 3 to 1 so we may watch this one. Then she calmly moved on to the next movie. No fuss, no arguments, no peer pressure to the girl who didn’t want to watch it. Just good manners and excellent diplomacy and respect for her friends. Parental heaven. The girls then voted unanimously on the 3rd movie presented.
Jacob is my even keel kid. He virtually never argues about anything and rarely ever complains. One (of many) example of this is his chores. I can remember complaining and whining about doing chores virtually every day at his age. My son doesn’t do that. When we ask him to do his chores in the morning, he puts on his shoes and does them. When we ask if he’s put the chickens up in the evening, he puts his shoes on and does it. Its phenomenal and fantastic and makes me want to squeeze him every day.
One final example. Yesterday, Jeremy asked the kids to fold the laundry from the dryer and work on filling the holes where he had pulled out the remaining posts from what was the chicken run. The kids, totally by themselves with no direction from a parent, divided up the tasks. Jacob folded the laundry and Catherine went outside to fill up the holes because she wanted to be outside. When Jeremy checked back in from what he was working on, he found Catherine attempting to use the nail to pack the dirt in the holes. For those who don’t know, our fencing nail is a 6’ iron bar with a flat round end and a wedge end. It weighs nearly what Catherine does. She knew that the nail was the tool that I had used to fill holes the day before and she was going to do whatever she could to do her job the right way – even if she couldn’t even really pick up the tool. When Jeremy took over the job of packing the holes, Catherine went back in the house and helped Jacob fold the laundry. No fussing or arguments – just great kids.
Ok, now that I’ve screamed from the digital roof tops about how proud I am of my children, we can go back to our regularly scheduled homestead programming….
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