Parental Report Card

I've always thought of parenthood as the ultimate crap shoot. Concentrate, focus, blow on the dice, pray and/or wish really hard and then let the dice fly ... hold your breath until they fall.

What works with one child does not necessarily work another ... children like adults are individuals (duh! ... but don't laugh too quickly because there's a multi-billion industry built on the fallacy that one-size-fits-all relative to parenting and childhood issues, child raising) ... Add more than one child to the parent-child mix and you bring into play family dynamics and sibling rivalries and another set of dynamics ...

Forget about crap shoots ... it's more like starting a recipe with thousands of variables and only a general idea of the necessary ingredients. So we're baking bread ... we're going to need flour and yeast ... all the other ingredients are best guesses at best ...

Add to all this the fact that you don't get to see the final product until much after the ingredients have been mixed together and percolated ... tampered by other adults, peers, experiences, innocuous and not so innocuous circumstances ...

But I'm mixing analogies (or are these similes?) ...

As a parent I've had four report cards so far ... Mel, Will, J and now Nic ... and I'm proud to say I think I've passed. Not the stellar grades I'd hoped for ... but a fairly decent average!

So why the ramblings about parental report cards? Because Nic came back with a whole new outlook on life ... and one based, in part, from having lived within another family system which allowed (or forced) her to examine her own. The words which warmed the cockles of my heart went something like this: "mom you just don't realize what a good mom you were and are - you exposed us to so much, gave us choices and let us make mistakes ..."

I mean ... can a parent ask for anything else? I know that I've found myself caught up many times throughout the years keeping up with the Joneses for the kids ... with trivial stuff ... lost within the day-to-day ... often questioning if I was doing enough, teaching enough, leading enough ... especially when faced with the judgement of other parents ...

But today I sit proud knowing that I've raised a handful of fine adults who question ... know how to enjoy the moment ... absolutely know how to make lemonade from lemons ... understand the power and responsibility of choice and responsibility ... are empowered ...

who'd have thunk it? I must have prayed really hard when I rolled those dice!