"Eastern Standard Time"

What did you do with your extra hour?  Me, I stayed in bed!  And I'm gonna do the same thing next spring when they tell me to get up an hour earlier!  Who ever invented this time shifting stupidity, and how did so many people fall for it?  The mennonites know how dumb it is, and for some reason so do the inhabitants of Arizona, USA, and Sonora, Mexico.  Must be some mennonites there as well.

Anyway, I think I put my hour to good use.  I used it to do some soul searching and found my self lacking in a key area.  I don't want to concede this completely but I think that maybe I've given myself a bit too much credit as a parent.  Parents are supposed to love their kids unconditionally and I don't believe I have always done that.  They are also supposed to put their kids welfare ahead of their own and in a mixed up kind of way I haven't done that either.  Let me explain.  Let me put a little of my inside, on my outside. 

When our kids are hurting it is instinct to try to make them feel better.  Why is that?  Maybe because we hurt so bad when they hurt, that in fact we are trying to end our own pain.  Is this indeed then putting their welfare ahead of our own?   At best you could say that it's a tie, and if indeed everyone feels better after the fix then I guess it is at least a win-win.  But what about when the pain they are experiencing is for their own good,  or at the very least simply part of their "growing up", and we still try to fix it?  Now whos welfare are we putting first?

I have told every one of my children time and time again, that often you have to experience a little discomfort in the short haul, to achieve the growth and the satisfaction in life that you want over the long haul.

Some guy I am to give such advice!!  Today it hit me like a ton of bricks that I have frequently avoided the short term pain that comes with seeing my kids unhappy.  I often become the "fixer", and in doing so have created longer term anxiety both for me and my kids. 

I'm going to try to do better.  I'm going to try to love my kids a little harder by being a little bit tougher.  Tougher on myself that is.  I'm going to try to analyze better before I jump to the rescue.  Determine if I am truly helping or just enabling.in an attempt to alleviate my own pain.  I think I owe them that....each and every one of them.

The book explains the difference between helping and enabling this way.  Helping is doing for someone, something they can not do for themselves.  Enabling is doing for them something that they could, and/or should be doing for themselves.  The hard part of course is making the distinction, but I can tell you with some confidence that I have done numerous things for my kids that clearly fall under the enabling definition.  While I acknowledge that it won't be easy, I must do better.  Try Not!

I actually find this bit of introspection quite intriguing.  Why am I like this?  Nature?  My mother would have crawled through a mine field to dry her kids tears.  Or is that nurture?  Either way I like it!  I'm gonna blame my dear, sweet, sainted mother for being too good to me. 

Damn I miss you Mom!!

So that's what I did with my hour.  For all you people out there who have always known what I needed 55 years of time changes to figure out, be kind to me.  After all, I'm an idiot!
Besides, being open about ones shortcomings is not always so easy....at least for me

(swim, 1200 metres)  (weights)

"Parents often talk about the younger generation as if they didn't have anything to do with it."---Haim Ginott

"If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves. "---C.G. Jung

Love
peter