Spring is on its way!/Life lessons in relationship

The crocuses have been carpeting the neighbors' back yard for about a week. The ground is thawing (after another late snow last Wednesday!), and we'll be planting peas in the next couple of days. And this morning I heard the geese honking as I lay cuddling with Samuel.

I do so appreciate my affectionate teenagers! I had morning cuddles with both twins this morning. Miriam came in for the first time since we cleaned her room the weekend before last. I've really missed her. As much as I understand her frustration and anger, and our need to be parents, I really felt hurt when she refused hugs. (It's her right, and we have never pushed our kids to be affectionate when they don't want to.)

We did have one really funny story come out of her "punishing silence", and she knows I claim the right to publish it, so here goes. . . Thursday night Tori was giving one of her friends a ride home to our neighborhood, and her car died in the turnaround on the highway just outside the entrance to our neighborhood. Naturally enough, she called for help. Knowing James had work early the next morning, and not wanting to disturb him at 10:45 PM, when Miriam answered the phone, Tori asked her to wake me. Miriam's response? "Can I get James instead? I'm not speaking to Mom." Everyone (except Miriam for some reason) has gotten a good laugh out of this.

Fourteen can be a miserable time to be a girl! Fortunately, I have seventeen and nineteen-year-old daughters to remind me that we CAN all live through it!

A visiting baby in Meeting for Worship this week, along with wonderful times "babysitting" my nieces and nephews in recent weeks, contrasted with adventures in parenting teens and conversations with the ones who have flown the nest, have made me really appreciate how quickly time passes and the kids pass through the phases of life. They all have so much to learn and teach!

Last Wednesday I spent the day with Aria and Evan, my brother Rob's children, while he and Lisa were educating our legislators about Tuberous Sclerosis. It's wonderful to be able to enjoy the results of their loving parenting. The kids are so happy, loving, enthusiastic, creative, and intelligent! I got sleepy toddler hugs from Evan when I arrived, and we had a wonderful time together while Aria was at school. He focuses so intently on his trains and construction projects, and then switches gears, and is all about communicating something imaginative. It's clear that he really enjoys the attention his big sister gives him, and learns so much from her.
Aria is a "model child" (a role model for the other children) in an early intervention program at the neighborhood elementary school, and was delighted to introduce me to her friends. She was even more delighted when I started speaking Spanish with one of her classmates. The kids have an Hispanic day care provider who speaks Spanish with them, and Aria had forgotten that I speak Spanish also. She's hoping to be included in the Spanish immersion kindergarten next year. I hope she makes it! Even with the challenge of learning Spanish, the teachers will have their hands full keeping her challenged! At lunchtime we had an intense conversation about numbers and math, because Aria was looking for a number word that I wasn't getting "right"! (You have to understand, twenty plus twenty equals forty, which is a new word for multiple tens. Therefore, by Aria's reasoning, there should also be new words when you add multiple hundreds, and I wasn't giving her that word!)
It really is impressive, especially with my background in language and early childhood education, to see how much those two kids have integrated! Evan's language skills, and synthesis of grammatical rules, are so far beyond his age level expectations that I was pulled up short by his age-appropriate (not quite 3 1/2 years old) speech patterns (missed sounds in words, for example). And his numerical sense is impressive also. One example-a kindergarten readiness test is the ability to count to twenty by rote, without missing numbers. He not only did that in English, but did most of it in Spanish also! Aria, who actually will be starting kindergarten in five or six months, can count beyond one hundred in English, and has the pattern down in Spanish, but just needs the words for multiples of ten (30, 40, 50, etc). She also sight-read a book I brought with me, WITH EXPRESSION!!! I really am impressed! And I appreciate the opportunity I have to be included in their lives! You're doing a great job with them, Rob & Lisa!

So, back to that idea of lessons to learn & teach. . . I feel like I learn so much about the world, and myself, through my interactions with my kids and other people in general. We each have our own path to walk through this life, and I don't presume to know how others should walk theirs. I do appreciate what I learn to see, by contrasting what I accept as a given with the way other people do things. Kids help so much in this, because their innocent questions, or adamant demands for answers (Aria) open my eyes to so many other possibilities.

Living with teenagers, especially my own, it can be a little harder. (For that matter, I think I may have been too exhausted to fully appreciate & take advantage of the opportunities when my own kids were at that younger stage!) They've now assimilated many of my viewpoints, and I often expect their behavior to match my expectations more than might be realistic, or even appropriate. Their different perspectives are more often couched in "attitude". And, for some reason, the opinions expressed in a huff just don't land as "cute" the way they did at five-years-old. And then I get to have a conversation with Eliza, who is still in Hungary, and appreciate the world through her perspective and experiences. I am so looking forward to traveling through Eastern Europe with her next month!

As I watch my kids with each other, I am really beginning to "get" my mother's joy at watching the relationships my sibs and I have with each other. I love being with the people my children are becoming, and am so glad they appreciate the relationships they have with each other! Like my sibs, they're all individuals, with different perspectives on life, but an abiding love and respect for each other. They're "good people", and I'm glad they're my people!