Parenting is tough. When the kids have some ongoing issue or problem, you wonder, “Is this a big deal? Or is it a stage they’ll grow out of?” You don’t want to overreact and make it worse. You also don’t want to ignore something serious.
Today we had a victory in our family: Stella went to school without crying. Last year, something happened at school that caused her anxiety every morning. It carried over to this year. She’d cry and cry before school, and fight to stay home. But she was OK once she got to class; her parents would leave and she’d stay all day and was fine.
But every morning she’d cry and fight. Mom and dad talked to her, prayed, talked to counselors, and prayed some more. This went on for weeks.
Today, she walked right in: “Bye Mommy!”
Did she just grow out of it? Will it change tomorrow? We don’t know.
My mom worried about me when I was a kid. For lunch, I’d only eat mayonnaise sandwiches on white bread, with the crust cut off. Crust was too radical. And the mayonnaise had to be spread micro-thin. Lunch was a white square. She was afraid I’d grow up to be a picky eater. I was a very skinny kid.
This morning I weighed 168 pounds. Six more pounds and I’m borderline overweight. I’m thinking of making homemade boiled peanuts this weekend.
I grew out of it.
A firefighter friend laughs at people who call to get their cat out of a tree. He says, “I’ve never seen a cat skeleton in a tree.” Me either. They must come down on their own.
Everything is not a cat in a tree, eventually coming down on it’s own. But, maybe it’s more often than we think.
