raise truly happy children

Wow and she seems so happy. How can this be? And she plays rugby, a father’s dream come true.

School is winding down with just the pressure of finals to come. Joy is very happy these days with more friends than I can know. She started playing Rugby and is loving it. This weekend she worked for 7 hours on her own getting her room ready to be painted. She did it all, chose the colors filled the holes in the walls with spackle and sanded them and then taped the cieling. Great job.

Well Joy is off for her 5th year of basketball camp. She was so happy calling last night to tell us all about being in the older kids group this year, just finished 8th grade so she now plays with the highschool kids.

...so this is a work in progress. I just don’t want to screw them up you know…raise serial killers or anything. But I think for the most part, they’re happy.

Is this even possible?

My mother is here this week and she has been very helpful but she and I don’t see completely eye to eye on everything.

She has been trying to be very open and to listen to me when I tell her that something bothers me which has been very nice. Although, she only incorporates a portion of what I say into her behavior.

The biggest thing that I am trying to coach her on is to listen to my son and what he is really saying. He is only 2 1/2 but his language skills are quite good. However, sometimes he doesn’t have the vocabulary to fully express himself so you have to be willing to not take everything so literally.

Anyway, one of the most painful things from childhood has to do with some pretty horrible abuse that I had to deal with from one of her many boyfriends. I am over the abuse but what still scars me today is the fact that when I tried to talk to my mother she showed me pictures of children who had boiling water poured on them and told me that what I was dealing with was not abuse because it wasn’t as bad as the pictures.

That is an extreme example of what she tends to do with most things I try to talk to her about. She immediately trys to dismiss it away or describe something that is worse. I think that she may be trying to show me that things could be worse so I should look at the bright side but I wish sometimes she would just listen to me and no more.

Ok, I obviously just had a flashback… that was pretty freeflow and I thought of deleting it but decided to let it go.

I am overwhelmed fairly often at just how fortunate I am. My son is truly the light of my life. It is painful to think that you can love someone so much and that your job is to make them grow up and move away. Good thing I have some time to get over it.

I want my son to have an amazing life. By this, I do not mean one full of things (although that can be nice too). But rather, I want him to be confident and considerate as he makes his way into the world.