It’s so hard sometimes to just stop and notice the little things that my kids do, the things that happen to them that are a big deal to them but seem like nothing to me. I think it’s hard, as a parent, to remember that while I am worrying about bill paying and school starting and whether we are out of milk, my kids are experiencing life in their own ways, and that’s important too.
Last night we went out to eat and had a completely disastrous dinner at Red Robin. Kaitlyn does not handle restaurants well. Which doesn’t stop me from wanting to go out to eat when I’m too tired to cook, but then I’m always surprised and upset when she doesn’t behave. I’ll never learn. Anyway, while I got a take out box and paid the check, Chris took Kaitlyn outside to wait by the car. He found a little frog hopping through the grass bordering the parking lot, and he picked it up. He told Kaitlyn to hold out her hand, and he put the frog in it. And then, he says, she screamed. I don’t know if it was the fact that he put something small that was moving into her hand, or what, but she did not like it, so he took it out of her hand and put it back down in the grass.
This afternoon, she and I were lounging on the bed when she looked at me very intently, and then said “Daddy put a frog in my hand!”. I said, “And then what happened?” She said, “it got my hand dirty!”. I said, “And then what happened?” She said, “and then I screamed!”.
I have to remember to make myself available for my kids to talk to. I have to not always seem too busy to just sit and chat, or to lounge on the bed and just let them talk. Because that’s when you find out what they really have on their minds, and it might be frogs now, but it will be much bigger problems soon enough.
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