Growing Up Too Quickly

The picture to the left is my all time favorite picture of my younger son. He was probably eight or nine.


The picture below was taken a year or two before though it seems in my mind it was taken just last year. It was in fact taken the year that my daughter got a life size Barbie for Christmas dressed as a ballerina. My youngest son couldn't wait to undress the Barbie and try the outfit on for size. You know he was really young because he even posed for the picture. He went from a carefree kid diagnosed with ADD at an early age, to a straight A student once on meds, although he went from six in the morning til dinner without much of an appetite because the only meds they had then were all stimulants. He didn't need stimulants, and when they came out with a drug strictly for attention deficit, he was in fifth grade and was coming very strongly into his own mindset. He said that it was HIS body and that he didn't want to put drugs into his body. I told him I would remind him of that if I caught him smoking weed with his buddies in his teens.

He faltered in high school; he pissed away an entire school year, but he was just lazy not under any influence other than boredom and rebelling against the system. It took until he was seventeen, and finally letting him squander in his own despair for a year that he woke up and realized that the only person he was hurting was himself. He has absolutely made an 180. He helps me out more in the house than anyone else. He comes home and does his homework. He is FINALLY a pleasure to be around and has taught me countless things that I never even knew .



Did you know that margarine was only one element away from being rubber? I haven't googled it, but it sounds right to me. He knows more about history and politics at his age than I do at mine. He is still a terrible speller, which bothers me, being an aspiring writer but I attribute that to texting and the general laziness of teens.

He has finally found his place, he has matured and realized that he was only hurting himself and also found that if he applies himself it makes a difference. I have no qualms saying that my kids have gone through trials and tribulations. What is important is that they have come out of it being a better person and a better human being. Better to happen now than when they are married with three kids to support.

I am so proud of my former ballerina...proud of the young man he has become and the grown man he will be. Kids are a HUGE responsibility and the responsibility weighs very heavily on me. My kids are what I make them and I am beginning to feel that I may have done a pretty good job after all.

Love your children and never be afraid to step in and intervene when necessary. That is why we are the parents and why when you DO your job parenting... you generally reap rewards of the seeds you have sewn.

I have found that if your teens don't seem to hate you every once in a while, you aren't doing your job. Dang...I must be up for 'Mother of the Year'!! Having kids has made me grow up more than anything else in my life...thank the Lord I had THREE!

I needed all three to make me realize what kind of person , parent and human being I wanted to become. I hope I have done okay...for THEIR sake as well as my own.