They bought all the books and thought they were prepared. Their children had other plans.
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As the parents of three boys, our life is anything but boring. We have wanted nothing more than to be a good mother and father. We wanted, actually needed, to do everything right. We bought all the popular books from being pregnant to raising children. After all, how tough could raising children be?
And, there are no universal rules on how to raise boys.
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Our goals were simple: we would not be the parents who yelled at their kids in public. We would not spank them. We would not have them fear us. Most of all, we would not be just their parents but also their friends.
When Max was born, we couldn’t be happier. He was perfect. I was 31 years old, and my husband was 40, both with a good head on our shoulders. And that’s when everything changed. Our priorities changed. We lived and breathed for Max. When he laughed, we laughed harder. When he hurt, we hurt worse.
He taught us so much more than our college degrees ever did. But, what we learned was humbling. We learned that patience is a virtue. We learned it is acceptable to make mistakes and mistakes are forgiven. We learned there were no right or wrong parenting styles when your heart is making the decisions. And we learned there is no book out there to prepare you for the miracle of children.
The next two boys, Noel and Rees, brought new challenges. Apparently what we learned from raising Max had very little impact on how we would raise the other two. No one ever told us how different children could be. And, there are no universal rules on how to raise boys. It’s a crapshoot, and we could only hope snake eyes weren’t in our future.
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We now have three wonderful boys who are all very different. The first one is very independent and self-assured, but cautious and somewhat introverted. The second one is hugely sensitive, has minimal self-confidence, and wants to save the world. The third one is a rule follower and becomes quite upset when corners are cut. He has a great sense of humor but can be very rigid in his thinking. Who knew we would have three such diverse children who needed three different parenting techniques? Certainly not us, at least not until we really began hearing them.
As we recall, we thought it would be fairly easy for us to reach our parenting goals but we were so very wrong. To this day, we are still not completely sure how we accomplished it, but we do know we had plenty of help. Our boys taught us how to be the individual parent each of them needed us to be.
Max may have needed less guidance than the other two but craved the ability to spread his wings and fly. This we gave to him.
We are proud that we never yelled at our children in public.
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Noel was born with enough empathy for the whole family but needed so much extra reassurance regarding his value. This we gave to him.
Rees kept us on the straight and narrow and asked tons of questions. But, he needed help learning everything isn’t just black and white. This we gave to him.
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We had to learn to listen before we could teach. We took every day as a new challenge and no longer waited for the easy answers we had hoped for years ago. We are proud that we never yelled at our children in public. We never spanked our children, and they surely do not fear us. And, we are definitely friends. Our boys deserve all the credit for showing us the way.
Without realizing it, our three boys had raised us. Remember, children are amazing. Teaching them is very important. But, learning from them is essential. Listen to your children, they deserve to be heard!
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Photo: Flickr/ Jeff Carson