It was a beautiful day today. My 14 year old daughter was my right-hand-girl at nearby fall festival. Cool and sunny and perfect to be out and about. We had loads of fun sharing our love of Lilla Rose with the ladies attending the festival. She’s a great assistant and a willing model, too.
I so enjoy a day now and then with some one-on-one time with my children. As a mom of many, it doesn’t always happen as often as I’d like. But with the children growing up it’s getting easier.
Driving home today, we passed by several rummage sales. I started reminiscing about the good ol’ garage-saleing days when I used to get out and hunt for bargains and treasures on Saturday mornings. She gave me a blank stare. “You did? When?” I was about to respond with a “You remember” but when I saw the confused look on her face, I realized that I had given up that habit long ago. I gave up shopping garage sales as a way to control the amount of ‘stuff’ in my home and so the younger children do not remember the thrill of the hunt early on a Saturday morning.
That little conversation gave me a little bit of a downer feeling at first. My oldest children have fun memories of tagging along and digging through the boxes and stopping at this sale and that. For some reason I started feeling guilty over the fact that my younger bunch did not have the same memories and experiences.
And then I came to my senses. Where did I ever get the idea that life was fair? That everyone deserved the same serving in life or the same privileges? Each person is created uniquely, with a unique mixture of personality and talent and opportunity – no matter what family size they are born into.
These children of mine, all 8 of them, have memories they share and memories they don’t share. Experiences both good and not so good that help to mold and make who they are and who they’ll become. I’ll trust God to be working in their lives and they’ll be accountable to Him. So, I’m choosing not to take on the burden of making life even-steven for them. That would actually be the unfair thing!
Child #5 and I made some fun memories together today. I’ll make some fun memories with the other on other days. And I’ll be ever so grateful.
What type of memories are you making with your children today? Do you find it easy or difficult to get one-on-one time with your children?
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Interesting. I’ve never thought of it this way. I figure my littlest has a lot of other memories that my youngest don’t have — like going to Disneyland when she was really small, things like that.
It’s good advice though. I do soemtimes wondering what her memory walls (like in Inside Out) look like. 🙂 Maybe I don’t want to know. 🙂
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Hi Hilary! Glad you found me 🙂 I do wonder at times what my children’s memories of childhood will be. Now, with grown children, I’m finding many of their fondest memories are not necessarily what I would have guessed. It’s fun discovering from them what they remember, and being reminded of things I had forgotten!
Interesting post. I struggle with this sometimes. One thing I learned from a teacher at work (I work part-time as a substitute preschool teacher) that really stuck was “fair doesn’t mean everybody gets the same thing, fair means everybody gets what they need.”
That teacher gave you some wise words, Jean. I tell my kids this all the time – as a mom of many, I’d go insane trying to make everything fair and even – and the children would have missed out on some valuable lessons. There are challenges, disappointments, joys and blessings in every day, every phase, no matter what birth order we are born in. Thanks so much for stopping by today!
I often wonder about this with our homeschooling too. There are some history and science topics that I know we covered our first few years of homeschooling that my youngest really doesn’t remember and yet as much as I feel bad about that history and science are two subjects we all work on together and to go back and spend more time on topics the older boys know and remember seems a bit silly. I’m sure my youngest will learn all that he needs to know but I often feel sad that he doesn’t remember the time we hid in their rooms during a storm pretending to be slaves escaping from slavery using the underground railroad or the time we made our own glittered volcano.
I have so many of the same feelings 🙂 glad to know I’m not alone! Reality is, I cannot replicate the past, but I can work at making today a good day, or providing opportunity to learn! By the way, that underground railroad experience sounds pretty amazing – I think I’d like to be a student in your classroom!