Category: Parenting
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Taking control
There is no exact recipe to parenting. If anyone claims otherwise, is already missing the mark. Even the drive to get it right, to be the perfect parent, can and most likely will mess things up royally. Parenting is messy. Parenting is fluid. Kids change and evolve. And that is good. God planted in us…
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A pillar of prayer
Ask and it shall be given to you. You do not have because you don’t ask. Ask without a selfish heart. I tell Jackie the story of her name. The week we met her we stumbled upon the significance of Jaclyn, rooted in the Hebrew Jacob, meaning “May God protect you”. That was our constant…
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Independence
At age five, jackie stubbornly practices her independence. She has a lot of freedom, though at times I consciously keep pulling back, as I hear myself nagging about this and that. A while ago she started taking our dog for the morning walk through the neighborhood. There she was, at 7 am, skipping on the…
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A mother to a child
I wallowed in self-pity. It gradually became more intense. Once my maternal clock started ticking, with no apparent resolution in sight, I felt hopeless and stuck. Something so seemingly easy, so abundant, why couldn’t it happen to me? Mother’s Day was hard. Hard because I didn’t want to rain on anyone’s parade, but I wanted…
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Ambitious & teachable
Never underestimate the ambition of an adoptee. Once they have taken a hold of a steady lifeline, even after they adapt to the good & predictable life, for better or worse they never loose that resilience, that keen awareness, the determination to survive, and to succeed. Yesterday Jackie got evaluated by four professionals to see…
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Parenting with an audience
“Do you ever yell at your kids?” I ask a good friend. “I do. But I yell mostly at home, in private.” She responds with disarming honesty which I love. When I see my parenting from from a far away perspective, it looks clever, funny and balanced. Except I often feel it’s not. For the…
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O viață. Dragoste, Respect și Adevăr.
Am aflat doar la sfârșit că Dana e mama unei femei care m-a mișcat profund prin iubirea și lumina exprimată în durerea văduviei. Dar nu despre asta a fost astăzi. Astazi ne-a fost reamintit neapologetic despre cât de provocatoare și încercată e căsnicia, mai ales în perioada preșcolară a copiilor. Ca să știm lupta efectiv,…
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Gaining control through letting go
It was a long day at kindergarten, as kids waited in the adjacent room during the parents-teacher conference at the end of the day. They were happy together. Lately they don’t want to say goodbye to each other. The twin boys kept saying that Jackie is coming home with them. Jackie has developed a steady…
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Be.
How many times have we heard someone tell us to be a certain way. To be something. To be someone. Be good! Be tough! Be a man! Be a nice girl! Be a woman! It is such an affront to our being. Even with the best intentions, the subliminal message is that we are not…
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The concept of money
Jackie is settling well into her age of five. There are bursts of energy and intelligence, of growth and exploration. We don’t do anything in particular to help her grow. We just create contexts, allow her freedom, we tease her with knowledge, leading by example. She started experimenting more and more. In the moment; it’s…
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Friday swimming
For a few years I haven’t felt the importance of Friday. But since Jackie, since we got (re)acquainted with kindergarten, I feel again the joy and the burden of the end of the week. Parents know why. Today I took Jackie out earlier from kindergarten and we went swimming. Instead of her taking a nap…
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Vineri la înot
De câțiva ani n-am mai simțit importanța zilei de vineri. Dar de-o vreme, de când există grădiniță, simt din nou bucuria și povara sfarșitului de săptămână. Părinții știu de ce. Azi am luat-o pe Jaclyn mai devreme de la gradiniță, și am mers la înot. În loc să doarmă, noi am înotat împreună, ca două…