Urgent Helicopters

For those who don't see my Facebook post... a friend posted a link to this article and I feel compelled to share.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1940395-1,00.html

I thought it was a great article on trends in parenting and it seemed to back-up a lot of the discussions Adam and I had BEFORE we had kids and discussions we''ve been having SINCE... and it reiterated that we need to slow down, let kids do things in their own time, not be pushy about extracurriculars and structured play... etc.

(So, honey, NOW I will say THANK YOU for packing up a bunch of Julia's toys and putting them away and now I'm ready to do more of it...!)

This article ties in well with another lesson I had in parenting this morning... well, one I have MOST mornings but today I was laughing all over myself about it.  If you are a believer in God my guess is that you have prayed for patience, and if there is one thing you know about patience (if you don't already) is that God doesn't GIVE patience, he PROVIDES OPPORTUNITIES for you to practice it.  So, every time I find myself praying for patience, I know that a lesson is coming around the corner.

Why was I laughing all over myself today?  As I was trying to shuffle Julia out the door so she could go to daycare and I was trying to urge her on quickly (because, you know, that few minutes is such a big deal in the scheme of things... ha!), it dawned on me that DUH, Julia doesn't hurry because she simply doesn't KNOW to hurry... children have no urgency at all.  No matter what I say to or try with her, she will not go any faster.  In fact, I was laughing extra hard because the exact second I would say, "Come on, let's go a little faster!", she would look up at me with those big blues, give a little devilish grin, and SHUFFLE.  She actually started to shuffle her feet.  Yah, that broke me and I was laughing like hyena. 

*I* need to learn to slow down and not be so pushy with her... because urgency is not a built in trait... it is something we learn.  And, while having a bit of urgency is not a bad thing (being on-time is generally a good thing, etc.), being overly urgent and being frustrated with your child's lack of urgency is not.  I really don't want my daughter to turn three and be pushing ME out the door... and therefore I really need to take a step back, breathe, slow down, and let her explore.

I stopped a dad at daycare to share my thoughts with him; ironically now I realize that he was actually in quite a hurry, and we had a good laugh.  It dawned on me that I've experienced a slower pace before, and not because I wanted to... back in 2002 I flew on a flight test for work and we stayed overnight in Pago Pago, American Samoa.  We were getting ready to leave the next day and decided to grab some lunch, and we decided we needed some quick lunch so that we wouldn't be late... we stopped in at a restaurant that advertised "carry-out" and "fast service"... I ordered a mocha and a sandwich... the other guys ordered as well... and 30 minutes later -- YES, 30 -- we had our food.  My mocha?  It had come from a packet.  The sandwich?  Something as easy as PB&J.  The amount of time?  Believe it or not, a sense of urgency is not common to EVERY culture on the planet and we had a good lesson in it that day... I doubt very much the lesson sunk in, as I know we were frustrated and amused by the "lack of service"... but simply, we were subject to a culture that did things in their own time.

All right... this blog post is going where I knew it was going to go... I knew I didn't have a real definite thought about how to end it... so I'm teetering on a tangent...

... at any rate, read and enjoy the article, give good thought to how to relax the need to be urgent in your life, just a tad... how well does that fit knowing that we are headed into the Holiday Season?  Stop to smell the roses a bit more (or, in the case of the season, the great smells of fall and winter), take time to enjoy your coffee instead of just using it as fuel to keep you awake, and... take time to enjoy your kids and take a lesson from them as you watch them discover, play, and learn.  I know I will!  :)

erin