What I Have Learned From My Children

The idea that our children teach us at least as much as we teach them is one of the truisms of parenthood. But when I started thinking about how to write this post, I kept coming up with a list of things that could describe any parent and any child. I wanted to show what is unique to the particular circumstances of our family’s experiences. I asked Christian for help on this one. Here’s what we came up with:

The not-so-serious

1. How to chase people around roaring. This seems to be Alex’s favorite occupation lately, one met at various times by giggles and outraged screaming, depending on the mood of the chase-ee.

2. How to win anyone over by giggling. I can’t get over Julianna’s silvery, dusky laugh. There’s just nothing like it. And Nicholas? That warbling belly laugh holds me prisoner. I’ll do anything for it.

3. You are how you eat.

4. Tolerance of repetition. Repetition is not something we tolerate well in modern life. But Nicholas is learning to talk, and all day every day he walks around saying, “What doing…Mommy? What doing…Da-ee?” Absent that, he’s trying to communicate some other sentiment, and he thinks that if he says it enough times in a row, we’ll figure it out. It makes me want to hyperventilate sometimes. I have to remind myself to be thankful for his desire to communicate.

5. The law of equal and opposite reaction. The child who charms everyone also must have a dark side. Julianna had the receptionist at the cardiology clinic eating out of her hand yesterday from the instant she put on Alex’s Iron Man helmet and made flirty eyes through it. But when the doctor and nursing staff walked into the exam room, she morphed into demon child. After an hour of solid screaming and FOUR PEOPLE, we managed to get an EKG done. They gave up without even trying to get an echocardiogram.

The sincere

6. The wonder of seeing myself in them. Alex is taking to music like a mother tongue, reading music and playing by ear, transposing at the piano, making up songs—my skills. It gives me chills sometimes. But he sleeps like his daddy (like the dead, IOW). Nicholas, on the other hand, can’t get to sleep at night, just like me. I look at Julianna’s and my reflections in the mirror, and something familiar teases me, something I haven’t identified yet. She’s not my spitting image…she’s not even the spitting image of my older sister, whom she most resembles…but there’s something there nonetheless.

7. Sign language. We never in a million years thought we would know as much sign language as we do. And although most of it we learned with them, not from them, I learned the sign for ambulance/fire truck/police car (not sure which) from Julianna just two days ago.

8. Structure makes the world a better place. Occasionally I take flak for being a nap Nazi. But now that Alex is getting so much older, we’ve begun playing loosey goosey with the little ones’ naps, and the level of negative energy in our house definitely shows for it. Structure makes everything better. This is a lesson I’ve learned to apply to my writing and housekeeping and, well, everything.

9. Self-sacrifice. You would think eventually a parent would have this lesson down pat, but the level of sacrifice ratchets up regularly, and it never stops chafing.

10. A capacity for suffering. Is it harder to suffer through the frustration and stress of a hospital stay, or to watch your child suffer? In a word…yes.

Now it’s your turn: what lessons have you learned from your children?

Shared with Mama Kat’s Writers Workshop.