Good days and...not so good days

Two Sundays ago was challenging.

It was communion time in church. And the Sunday school kids come up to join their parents to communion. So Lauren and Luke trooped up to us. Kevin took Luke name tag from his shirt and proceeded to take Lauren's tag off too. Problem was, she wanted to take her own tag off. What followed was...a look of shock on Lauren's face, tears starting to fill her eyes and her expression (verbally) of "why did Daddy take my name tag off?".

Like on autopilot, I whispered to Lauren to "stop it!" or we will need to go out of the church to talk.

What happened next, I did not expect.

She looked at me. And said, very angrily, "Mummy...Daddy makes me happy...Luke makes me happy...but you...make me MAAAD!". Whoa!!! And I wasn't even the person who took her tag off without telling her...!

Then on Friday, Lauren asked me to teach her how to cook. We were watching Junior Masterchef, Australia - great show!

So we roasted a chicken - Lauren peeled 1 1/2 potatoes - more like she laboured over them! She lovingly marinated the chicken.
Held a knife for the first time to cut brocolli. One of her favoured vegetables.

On Sunday morning, she made pancakes. She stirred the pancake mix, and learnt how to watch the pancakes in the pan and flip them over!

And the best part, she tucked in happily into both her roasted chicken and pancakes.

Like I said, good days and...some really trying days.

Meng Huat - my brother in law - wrote me something really encouraging.
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Dear Wee Leng,

Thank you for sharing the story about Lauren saying "Daddy makes me happy, Luke makes me happy but YOU MAKE ME CRAZY."

I remembered when I was young, I wanted to grow up real quick and be an adult. Now that I am an adult, well it is not much fun and I want to be a kid again.

Part of being an adult is that you have got to do things that you don't want to do but have to do.

Hmmm, if you were a kid, you would say, Hey! that's what I have to do as well esp the studying part.

Well, the difference is - a kid has his/her parents forcing him/her to do what ever the kid has to do.

As an adult you have to force yourself to do the important things or face the consequences and if you are a parent you have the additional task of forcing the kid to do what the kid has to do (Note : while I believe that kids need some forcing, how much /to what degree is the question. check out the book causing a storm in the west and the debates that it is generating ie. the asian tiger mum!)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/07/AR2011010706543.html

On the plus side we see the cultivation of habits of success and not the development of habits of failure, we see growth- like luke sleeping on his own. Like lauren's ability to express her feelings.

So keep up the good job of being good adults / parents.

mh
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Thanks bro!