I Just Want The Luckys

When my kids were younger they went through what I call food phases—especially when it came to what they ate for breakfast. A food phase was a period of time where they wanted nothing but a certain food for breakfast. Over the years my kids’ breakfast food phases included peaches and cream oatmeal, Cheerios®, rice with salt and butter, peanut butter toast, vanilla pudding and chocolate covered raisins (do NOT judge me), Cookie Crisp®, cheesy scrambled eggs, and Lucky Charms® (to name a few). Hey, with four kids and sixteen or seventeen years of eating breakfast at home, the phases were a-plenty.

Sometimes food phases lasted a few weeks. Others lasted months…even a year or more. I didn’t mind. I tend to be like that myself. So when one phase was over and a new one was begun, I just rolled with it…except when it came to Emma and her Lucky Charms.

When she first started eating them she couldn’t even pronounce it correctly. Instead of Lucky Charms, she said Yucky Charms. Again, not big deal. What was a big deal, though, was the fact that she started picking out “the luckys’, aka colorful crunchy marshmallows, eating them, and leaving the cereal in the bowl.

After a few days of this, it got to be a battle of wills. Sometimes I won. Sometimes she did. This went on for the duration of two or three boxes of cereal. Each time she finished a box, she insisted that’s what she wanted for breakfast, so I’d buy more. A new box of cereal didn’t mean a new (and better) attitude, though. Emma still tried to get by with just eating the luckys.

When I finally decided (or figured out) the battle of the luckys wasn’t worth fighting, I informed Emma she had to choose a new breakfast food. I was tired of fighting over cereal. If memory serves me correctly, the end of the luckys was the beginning of cheesy eggs. That’s not really important, though. What is important, however, is the lesson I want you to learn from my family’s little breakfast club.

The lesson I want to leave with you is this: As a parent, you need to take a firm stand when it comes to making sure your kids take the good with the bad…the bitter with the sweet…the work with the fun…the—well, you get the point.

Let your kids—no, insist that your kids—have the privilege of seeing things through to the end. And that includes when the end isn’t fun or doesn’t meet their expectations. For example:

*Don’t let your kids quit the team mid-season because they don’t want to practice or because it’s no fun. Life isn’t all about fun. It’s about fulfilling commitments and seeing something through to the end.

*Don’t let your kids pick at their food or refuse to eat what you serve for dinner, then give them snacks because they are ‘starving’ thirty minutes later.

*Don’t finish a school project for them because they ‘can’t’, because they think it’s a senseless assignment, or whatever other excuse they give you. Insist they do it.

*Don’t take over the care of a pet they promised to take care of (cross their heart)…then get tired of. Insist they live up to their end of the bargain or give the pet to someone who will.

To a lot of you, Emma’s finicky cereal-eating might not be a big deal. You might say, it was just cereal and it would pass. But it wasn’t just cereal.

It was about respecting the rules and learning to be responsible instead of wasteful.

It was about keeping her word. She promised (yes, she used that word) she would eat both the luckys and the cereal, so she needed to know a promise is more than a bunch of words.

It was about learning that life doesn’t always give you what you want and realizing life is about a lot more than just enjoying the luckys (the good things and positive experiences).

As parents we definitely want to make sure our children’s lives are full of luckys, but remember this: when life is all about luckys, it doesn’t take long for a child to forget to be thankful for the luckys in their life.

Love,
Momma D

                          Copyright 2018 Darla Noble. No part of this can be used or copied without permission from the author. 

                                                                                                       

                                                                                                      

Dynamite and Big Hearts Both Come in Small Packages-Handle With Care

A few years ago I wrote a post for this blog title, WARNING: Bad Mom Moment Ahead. In it I wrote about having to leave our dog, Maggie behind when we moved and how I told Zach it would be fine—that we’d get another dog. I made it sound like any dog we got would be as sweet, loyal, and as smart as Maggie. I made it sound like people and pets are meant to be disposable and temporary. Ouch! What was I thinking? Answer: I wasn’t. Shame on me! 

My original purpose in sharing this incident was to remind you that we aren’t perfect people, so we cannot be perfect parents. I reminded you that we’re going to make mistakes, but that we shouldn’t let those mistakes defeat us or define us as moms and dads. 

Today, however, I want to look at the ‘Maggie story’ from a different angle because lately I’ve had reason to think about just how tender and vulnerable our kids’ hearts are no matter what we may think or even how we believe they are processing what’s going on around them. So keeping that in mind, let’s continue the ‘Maggie story’…

Because we’d moved in the fall of the year, John and I decided to wait until spring to get Zach and the girls another dog. So for Easter we got them an adorable beagle puppy they named Bonnie. Bonnie was indeed a cute puppy. She was also absolutely, positively, undeniably the most disobedient, dog on the planet! No matter how hard we tried (and did we ever try) to get her to settle down and be a real pet, she fought us at every turn. The kids couldn’t enjoy her because all she wanted to do was run as fast and as far as she could possibly run. In short, she was no fun. 

After several months of intensively trying to change her, and failing miserably, the only attention Bonnie got was to get fed, watered, and to have her pen cleaned out. And all of that was done rather begrudgingly. But can you honestly blame them?

FYI: We finally gave Bonnie to a man who had other beagles. He was confident he could “…bring her around”. 

Throughout the years we had other dogs. A few good ones, one or two other not-so-good ones, and a few really great ones. But none of them ever really won Zach’s heart the way Maggie had all those years ago. 

I say that because fast-forward almost twenty years to one day while he was working along the side of the highway. A dog came up out of the woods and claimed Zach for her own. She didn’t leave his side the entire day and when he opened the door of his truck to get inside…so did she. 

He called to tell me about it; telling me how she looked a lot like Maggie AND that he’d brought her home and named her...yep, you guessed it. He named her Maggie. 

This Maggie was also smart, loving, and completely loyal to Zach and his young family from the day he brought her home until the day she died. She loved each of them, but it was obvious that she loved Zach most of all. 

You can say what you want, but it wasn’t just dumb luck that those two found each other that day and it wasn’t a coincidence she looked like the ‘original’ Maggie. She was the closure…the remedy for Zach’s six year-old broken heart (even though it was a long time coming). 

I know leaving the first Maggie behind was something we had to do. I also know that my handling of the incident wasn’t the worst ‘bad mom moment’ I ever had (although I wish it was). I even know that my mishandling of the situation didn’t ruin Zach for life. But it did leave a little scar—one I put there. So do yourself and your kids a favor by taking a couple of valuable lessons from me and one of my bad mom moments.

One: Don’t assume that just because your children are small that their feelings are, too. 

Their hearts are huge and vulnerable. Their feelings and emotions run deep. But because they are still children, they don’t usually know how to process and express themselves accurately, adequately, or appropriately. 

Two: Listen with your eyes, ears, mind, and your heart WIDE open. 

It’s up to you as their parent to ask questions and then listen to their answers; making sure they know they can answer honestly without fear of upsetting you, angering you, or being made to feel dumb or insignificant. 

You’ve heard that saying, ‘dynamite comes in small packages’, haven’t you? Well so do big hearts. 

Love,

Momma D

                    Copyright 2018 Darla Noble. No part of this can be used or copied without permission from the author. 

                                                        

                                                                                          ZACH and some of Maggie's puppies 1986