Struggling through with joy... |
kind of.
Struggling through with joy... |
Last week the father of a student said, “Keep your thumb on that penny long enough, it’ll shine.” While I don’t subscribe completely with this parenting philosophy (I’m more of a “Love the penny relentlessly but provide good structure and boundaries, but don’t be so controlling that the penny feels stifled and unable to be itself, unless the penny is being a jerk, then definitely keep a thumb on the penny. But still accept the penny as it is. Make sure the penny eats well and gets plenty of sleep so that it can manage its emotions, and provide a good blend of free time and lessons and sports for the penny, even if it means sacrificing your own hobbies…) it is effective in the case of this child
My own father did not appear to have a parenting philosophy. It wasn’t a thing men of his generation thought about, for one thing, and he didn’t have a good example of fatherhood from his own childhood. He felt his main job was to provide us with a nice house and make sure we were always clothed, fed, and had a warm bed to sleep in, and he did this well. He was always present in our lives, which isn’t something he could depend on from his own father. He loved us deeply but struggled with the harder aspects of parenting, like setting boundaries and meting out discipline that didn’t just involve yelling. He was more of a fun- time dad with me when I was little. We played together a lot, and he indulged my requests to fix his hair and paint his nails. He taught me all his superstitious ways. We avoided walking under ladders and made wishes on eyelashes and dandelions. When we visited the cemetery, we always stepped over graves, not on them. We never failed to pick up heads-up pennies and tucked them in our shoes. Yesterday I squeezed in a walk while my daughter was in ballet class and found a heads-up penny on the ground. It felt like a visit from my dad, who has been gone almost fourteen years. A part of my rational brain knows pennies on the sidewalk and the floating seed of a dandelion are not visits from the beyond, but they keep me tethered to the tremendous love of my father. They remind me I don’t always have to know what I’m doing as a parent. With love, the penny will still shine.
1 Comment
3/3/2023 08:50:39 am
This thought of being tethered to the love of our loved ones through our memories spoke to me today, expecially because I am using the SOLs to write memories of my husband so I will at lease have them on paper.
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