Over the last year or so, I've been coming to realize how much my kids are like me. It's strange, in some ways, to step back and just watch these tiny beings spout things that usually come out of your own mouth.
For instance, Little Red has decided she loves holding babies. She's 4. I have pictured memories of holding babies when I was that little. Her face looks like mine. Her grip on the little one looks like mine. It's tremendous!
Little Bird likes to be involved in anything I am doing. She gets in the way and wants to bake or help in the kitchen. She wants to help put things away, or read books with her siblings, or just BE with people. Again, the similarity...uncanny.
My buddy, though, has shown me some things about myself that I didn't even know. In working with him to get himself organized and able to actually make it through each and every day, we have to use a visual schedule, and a whole bunch of cues. We also have to be extremely careful to monitor what kind of activities he's doing for how long, elsewise we are faced with a child who cannot calm down whatsoever until he explodes into a meltdown. In the last little while, I've been confronted with my own need for structure and almost so far as making myself a schedule for each part of my day. It's not that I'll cry uncontrollably if I can't watch MY movie or anything like that, but I do get much more testy, and tend to yell at my kids, or not be able to tolerate simple things, like the smell of supper cooking, or so on and so forth.
I am also learning that if I do anything that triggers my vestibular system, I have to really work to calm myself down again, or else I'm super hyper until I just crash.
Buddy also is calmed down by intellectual activities, creating things, or reading. It's like they poured his brain straight into my brain's mold. (well...maybe not EXACTLY). My mind MUST be stimulated, or I feel like I am off balance, or running in a hundred different directions at once. Without taking time to read, or knit, colour, or read....I'm a mess.
Chips off the old block....all of my kids. My hope is that in all of the similarities, that the ones that they grow into, are the God honoring ones. I know I have so many different flaws and shortcomings. I hope that as they grow, they grow out of those ones.
All of this observation has made me step back. Some of the qualities my kiddos have inherited are just that - inherited; others are learned. I've needed to take a close look at how who I am and what I do plays out in the ripple effect in my kids, and in turn, their kids...and so on. It's staggering to realize the impact one can have on so many. Now, to make sure that impact is becoming....and worthy of copying.
...How do you see yourself in those around YOU?
xo
J
soli deo gloria
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