Welcome to the Family, Daisy

I'll let the picture speak for themselves but as you can tell the girls talked Daddy into getting them a kitty. Her name is Daisy. The girls love her but I think right now she tries her best to hide from them.

 

 

 

 

Recent posts you may have missed:

Way to Lead by Examples, US Leaders

A Little Place called E Town

The Naysayers and Believers


 

Way to Lead by Example

I have spent a decade working with America’s youth, and in that time I have worked with well over a thousand kids. I know it’s typical for adolescents to feel misunderstood and undervalued, and I’m not here to make excuses for their behavior. As an adult, I see a lot of criticism directed at today’s youth, but I’m not here at the moment to agree or necessarily disagree with the criticism directed at them.

We are a society living in fear of our future. Recent conversations with high school and college students have shown me over and over again, they are afraid of what hope the future holds for them. As a parent, I’m afraid of what the future holds for them. Is it because of them and their attitudes and values though? I feel that some see it this way, but I'm here to point the finger at someone else.

You know why I’m scared? Why they’re scared? Because what they see, what I see, what way too many of us see, is a country that is more about money and personal gains than any actual real values. We want to criticize the values of today’s youth! Really? Where do you think they’re getting their examples from?

We have corporations like Macy’s that’s opening their stores on Thanksgiving and forcing their employers to work all for that corporate money gain instead of celebrating a day that is meant for what is suppose to be one of America’s most important values, family. We have a government that is sulking and pouting like spoiled little children because they can’t get their way. Government isn’t about the good of the people anymore; it’s about individual gain and victories. It’s about personal egos, not values like doing the right thing, helping others, or working for the greater good. Our leaders in corporate, political America are acting like spoiled, selfish little children that don’t value anything but their own gain. You want to call today’s youth entitled? Our leaders are stripping us of our values with their poor examples.

Change in how we want to be perceived as Americans starts at the top. I for one am completely embarrassed of our leaders, whether they’re the corporate or political ones. They should be ashamed of themselves. I doubt none of them would think to look at what they’re doing wrong; they would much rather point the finger at someone else. There are people working that are going to have to put off mortgage payments, auto loan payments, skip a planned trip or family event because their paycheck is postponed because of a government that can’t get their shit together because they’re too busy blaming the other side.

Our leaders’ examples of values absolutely sucks so what do you expect from today’s youth? They are lost. My students write every year on the necessity of why we need government in society. Maybe this year I’ll have them write about how poor leadership can destroy; how strong leadership is a necessity to improve, grow, and succeed.

They want to drill today’s youth with testing, testing, testing on the academics. I think this shows right here that there’s values in teaching the skills of teamwork, compromise, leadership because obviously our leaders must have been the first bubble filling generation who was so busy spitting out facts to show how they were so much better than everyone else that they forgot to learn the actual valuable lessons that would actually help them be the leaders this country needs.

A little place called E town

As my newsfeed on Facebook blew up Friday with everyone’s Homecoming pictures from back home, I was reminded of a place that still makes the idea of Mayberry possible. Generations of graduates gather on the streets, local shops and businesses close down for the annual parade, and it seems like the whole town is there in the heart of old town to cheer of the next generation of small town life.

Some see small town life as something to escape or something not worth looking for; they see it as something not as great as the bigger places in the world, but as someone who left for the supposed greater places in life (I think I left just to see what else there was outside its walls), I can tell you, there are many things to love and appreciate about a small little town we all like to call E town.

It’s a place where the town centers around the happenings of the schools. I remember a place that would practically be silent on a Friday night except for the roar of the crowd at Tiger stadium because that’s where everyone was. If you had the experience of being one of the teams that made the run to states in the 90s you remember a flood of cars filling the parking lots before the big games, town fans rallying behind the teams with pep rallies and send offs. You remember the town paper at practically every game and big school event, and anxiously waited for the next edition of the Daily Standard to cut out the clippings of those wonderful school memories.

I remember how you can’t walk into a grocery store or a bank or even outside your door without taking three times longer than you planned because you’d run into at least three different people that knew you or was asking how your mother, father, or grandparents were. It’s a place where you better behave in school because half the teachers were an old family friend of someone’s in the family. It’s a place where everyone seemed to know you since you were knee high to the grass.

It was a place where high school kids hung out in the hitch lot or the McD’s parking lot. It was a place where you lined up to the street for the town’s favorite ice cream at Dari B. It was the place every high school kid wanted to work.

It was a place you loved. It’s place that as much as you were excited to graduate and move on, you were sad too because you knew you’d be leaving something great behind.


Other recent posts you may have missed

The Naysayers and the Believers

The Working Mom Life on the Job Evaluation Form

Time is What Makes Great Parents

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The Naysayers

I read this post recently from one of my favorite blogs, There's Just one Mommy, about the naysayers. I could totally relate to what she was saying. If you’re one of those naysayers, I apologize in advance. But I’ve had to deal with a lot of naysayers, Debbie downers, Negative Nancys, whatever name you want to give them kind of people.

Maybe we, as in Nate and I both at times, encounter this because we are idea people. We always have these “ideas”, hopes, ambitions, things we think we can accomplish. But whether it was finishing college, moving halfway across the country, owning a rental property, where or how much we wanted to travel, how many kids we want to have, our plans for how we hope to raise them, how we want to manage or spend our money, we’ve encountered a lot of naysayers at times. I'm sure if we wanted to get a motorcycle and take a motorcycle class, which we've discussed at times but not any time soon, I'm sure like OneMommy we'd encounter more naysayers.

So my question is this, why? Why do we want to discourage people from taking risks, trying something they’ve always wanted to try? Do we really discourage them for their own good or because of our own insecurities? We stick to our comfort zones even when we’re not happy. Why are we so scared of the unknown, the choices that are different than our own?

Just as OneMommy states, I don’t want to get to the end of my life and feel like I missed something. But not only that but tomorrow is not promised to anyone so why not chase the things we hope to do today. For those naysayers, I feel that the message isn’t so much that they really think the person they’re discouraging is going to fail, but their own regret for not doing something they want to take a risk on. As someone who had to really stop and consider what was my biggest fear in making a big life changing decision, I can tell you it’s not the fear of failing but the fear of never trying. I can’t handle the “what if” question.

So forget the naysayers, negative Nancys, Debbie downers, and do what you want to do. Don’t be a naysayer, be a believer.

Time is What Makes Great Parents

Some of my fondest memories as a child were the times of  my dad sounding reveille on weekend mornings to rise everyone out of bed at the crack of dawn to head the hour into the city for a softball tournament. I remember the times of the car rides across the country to see my grandparents in Buffalo, New York where we would sing as a family at the top of our lungs to whatever old country tune struck our fancy. I remember the times of mom and daughter shopping trips or movie nights while dad was away on a hunting trip. I remember the times my dad would take us hunting even though he knew we'd be too loud he'd never see anything to actually shoot. I remember  the times of my dad coming home from work and sitting in that driveway for hours catching all three of us. I remember the times of my dad parking his semi truck in the high school parking lot so he wouldn't miss one of our ball games and then he would drive the semi an hour back to the plant before finally coming home for good at almost 10 o clock at night just to have to get up before 5 to do it all over again. I remember the times my mom, who is one of the hardest workers I know, making sure she arranged her work around our games so she could get out early enough to watch us play. The list of times I remember with my parents as a child growing up could go on and on, but there's always one trend-they made the time and they made it count.

With each new generation of parents, there is change, different factors that change our journeys, and usually we have ideas of how we want to do things differently, some even better, than our parents did, but this is one very vital value that I hope is not lost as as my generation raises the next generation. Time is something we can never get more of whether it's in the end when we look back on our lives or when we look back on our children's youth. Time will pass and there's nothing we can change about that, but what we make of that time is what matters. Some may argue that the quanity of time is more important, and it definitely has its place and importance, but I think the quality ranks higher. Some would argue that  we should change the quanity with the life choices we make, but even with my own parents who at times worked long days and hours, it's not necessarily the quanity that defined the time of my childhood but the quality of that time.

 Even though my mom was able to stay home with us until I was ten, the majority of my childhood memories actually come from after that time. I read something recently that hinted that choosing to work is an excuse to take a break from our kids and do something for ourselves.  Many parents have to work, but that doesn't mean their children are getting less of a quality childhood. I am working mom with lots of working mom friends, and the balance is hard, probably harder than anything any of us have ever done in our lives. No, as working mothers we don't get to spend as much time with our children as a mother that chooses or has the opportunity to stay home or work less, but I'm confident that the time we do spend with them is valuable.

As I enter into a time in my children's childhoods where they're starting to have their own interests and activities, I have a totally new appreciation for the choices, sacrifices, and dedication my parents made to my sisters and me. I look back at my own parents and my friends' parents that I grew up with and I know the capability to do what I want to do, to be the parent I want to be, is possible because they lead the way by example.

We cannot get any lost time back; we can't get back the baby, the adorable toddler, the innocence child, or the growing adolescent that they are or once were. I think one of the most valuable things I learned from my parents is to live in the moment and make the time we do get to spend together count. There are so many choices and opinions when it comes to parenting, but I don't think any of them are more important than the choice of time with our children.

As a working mom, I am constantly asking myself how can I make this little slip of time we have together whether it's an hour or so on a week night, the weekend, or those few weeks of vacation a year meaningful time with them. I'm as guilty as the rest of them of turning the TV on sometimes for them, sitting on the computer while they play,or staring into space while they wreak chaos on my house because I'm too tired to distract them with something else. But you can bet I stop and reflect often what have we done together that shows them I love them, that I want to spend time with them, that I didn't let a whole week slip by dominated by the stresses of work, other responsibilities, and just the busy schedule of life.  Did we read books together, did we cook or bake together, did we get up and dance to some random song on the radio, did they know I was there cheering them on at their latest activity, did we go to the library or park, did we take a family outing somewhere, explore something new, color or create something together?

I look back at my parents with their jobs, their hours, their own hobbies and activities, and they could have so easily said they were too tired or that it was too much. Never once did they turn down an activity or extracurricular  we wanted to do because it was starting to become too much for them to balance or handle. They could have just been good parents, taking care of us financially and with the basic child upkeep of feeding and bathing us. The could have been good parents because they loved us, asked about our day, and maybe watched some TV with us at the end of the day, but they weren't good parents. They were great parents because no matter how much was on their plate, how tired they were, how overwhelmed they possibly felt, they made time for us and they made it count.  It's not the passage of time, how long we've been parents, or even necessarily how much time we spend  with our kids, that makes a parent a great parent. It's making the time we do get with them count, making it something valuable to them and even ourselves that I think makes a parent a great parent.

Recents posts you might have missed

OMG! Did my kid really just do that?

Why as a Working Mom I sometimes don't like Fridays

Thanks for Growing with Us