You lead by example. What example you make of yourself will be held as testimony for what others around you become.
You want to always practice what you preach. All the time. At least for me, for the sake of my children, I must make sure they see the strong, persevering side in me with least amount of faltering to my best effort.
Next to my children would be my students. I owe to my students best energy and spirit for the hour they are with me. Hence, I preplan ahead what I will be covering, why, and how to best deliver to create greatest impact. Those hours add up to a yearlong process of crafted instruction. What students will get out of me is what I put in. Hence, I must perform as if every class, every day, is one that will count.
You can plan for each hour because within those confines, the steps are more concise and clear. Plan for a lifetime or even just a fraction with your own children, that’s twenty-four hours, seven days a week, for a full year, times how many years they will ask of you.
You know what your students need from you. You hope to know everything your children individually need from you.
It’s funny how I am able to be more forgiving of myself around those who are not of my own natural pushes into this world. I can laugh off my errors, embrace my stumbles, and fend off any criticism with much greater finesse. I get what students need out of my class. They get what I need from each of them.
To perform in front of your own children, however, is a challenge at each given moment. Even to the end of nights you know you wake to have each in your home to care for until one at a time, they step out and into the world without you.
What your children need from you right now could be vastly different from what they need from you in the next moment. What you need from each of them is love, honor, and respect. What you get out of them, at various times, is more or less of what you hope for.
To any children’s eyes, they see the world as it is today. Through your eyes, you know what the world is like under many facets through several accounted for and unaccounted turns.
While children are newly embracing life, you, on the other hand, have already been living it for some time. And although you feel fortunate to have gone through many thickets and thorns through several, what seemed like, jungles and forests at times, filled with many unknown encounters amidst the findings of turned corners, with only a stronger self to keep on, you yourself are still moving forward with an end game to your last day. Interestingly, you have more than yourself to guide through along the way now. The mother goose you have become.
Observe. The mother goose must walk her goslings across several roads with no sign of fear to lead the way until one at a time, the goslings take on their own journeys before the cycle repeats in multiplicity.
There is so much more to a parent than just leading to cross roads, however. So much more. So much, much more. Day in. Day out.
There is no end to raising children even when they have left. You feel as if they are still watching your every move, wondering what you will do next. Not for your sake. But, whether consciously or subconsciously, for their sake. You know this. Thus, you are constantly pushing out the best of you, hoping to encourage each within their own paths.
It’s not that you want to be a few steps ahead. For the endless love and care, it is a MUST that you lead far in front. They need to see you. You need them to see you.
Life happens, however. By the end of the day, the heart, mind, body, and spirit have gone through a lot of interactions with the world. The heart wants to calm itself, the mind wants to stop thinking, the body wants to rest, and the spirit wants to close itself in. There is no room for another push. At least, not wanting to.
There are commitments to dedicate your time to for your children. There are also the deadlines you have of your own. It doesn’t matter what each are. As a homemaker, it could be making sure food is ready to serve and eat before all get home in between all other tasks you were determined to finish for the day.
As a working mother, it could be finishing work demands so you don’t have to take any home, either physically or spiritually. You want Home Sweet Home, not Home Bitter Home. Your ears want to listen to all that your children have to say. They do not know, however, all the many buzzing noise you have been first trying to turn down or off before they even got in the car or entered through the doorway.
From the moment of separating your calling as a parent to other callings out of you, to even just add partnership with your spouse, there is a must of relentless drive that must be daily pulled out of you.
What I call a rush of euphoria, where you know you must go into overdrive to get one task done before going into the next, this inner challenge kicks in and while you needed some kind of push on all other days to get whatever you were supposed to get going and be done with, every day is yet another ultimate day where something must get done after another. Need for deliverance surges into the brain and energy once again must be found.
In the rarity when there is absolutely no deadline, just a slot on the list that is noted as something that could possibly get done today, it will most likely sit there due to it being without threat of disappearing. The redundancy of life, even just to follow the basics, somehow find a way to consume the hours as giving, rather than getting, takes into full action.
The possibility of getting non-demands, non-mandatory tasks done still exists so as long as it never gets erased as a To Do. Hence, all potentials and possibilities of every mental concoction takes a back seat or is set aside to instead, focus on our children, for the love and ultimate sacrifice of doing right by them.
The determination is there. Only thing is, your children are yours. 24-7. There is hardly any give to any of your wrongs, irregardless of your attempts of aiming to do right. Time is not your friend and as the clock ticks, other things have already compacted your spirit aside from feeling disconnected or incomplete.
What was one task becomes many other tasks attacked prior to the one thing you wanted to get done for the day. All other tasks, although attended to, will not get you the ultimate satisfaction of getting done because essentially, all those other tasks were not the focal point. You wanted to get to that one thing.
Procrastination in the mind before the body even kicks in can also be the greatest nemesis at the onset of beginning. All of a sudden, that one thing to be done is interrupted by those multitude of other much more fun or peaceful things to do. The mind is at ease to do the less challenging. After all, what you sought to attack would require a little, if not, a lot more from you. To ease into the less demanding of your heart, mind, body, and spirit… the familiar nemesis is once again befriended as it awaits with a smile.
You go to the park. You play some games. You bake or cook a little more. You sit and talk with your spouse or partner longer than you thought to do.
As the day goes by, this inkling inside you that time is running out for the day starts to creep in. You know it. You ignore it. Like a Gremlin, the inkling grows.
Your children seem to be filled with joy. You are satisfied with this for the day. You have to be for the day is just about done. Inside, you feel a void. That painting. That book. That project. That one thing you were going to attack. Tomorrow.
Today was your present, but you gave the gift away for Tomorrow.
How many tomorrows must you plan for before today is seen as the only one you need?
Soon enough, you learn. That empty, unproductive feeling no one can comprehend on the outside. You looked so busy. You were busy. Deep inside, you feel unaccomplished.
You hear your inner words of wisdom: Stick to a plan. Work hard. Play hard. In that order.
You are the mother goose. You must lead.
Although I don’t deeply regret much, I do wish I had kept two memorabilia of both me and my husbands first years together: his planned out matrix for our first three children he had taped on the wall and my daily planner I had when I was a stay-at-home mom for almost a decade.
We may have never ever spoken of it then, but determined to get parenting right, we each had our own set goals for how we would raise our children. While my husband’s was on a yearly plan, knowing to the year each of our children would graduate from high school and beyond, my planner was how to fill each day with each of our children.
Television shows (from Blue’s Clues to Arthur) were monitored and limited. Arts and activities were planned accordingly. Birthday parties were thought of months ahead prior to the exciting, yet another, blessed celebration. Holiday decorations and gift wrapping were prioritized at the onset of time permitted.
There was nothing in me that wanted to quit trying each day to achieve excellence in providing my children what in my heart only drew up to imagine in the means I could.
Around the age of eight to ten, however, it’s as if this middle school teacher now got her own training of change beyond one’s control from her own children before ever activating her actual teaching degree. My own children became my very own eye-opening experience of even in your greatest attempts, something can still be seen as wrong.
Aside from the tantrums and test of boundaries, at their youngest years, your own children give you that impression that you can do them no wrong. They illuminate your days with so much wonder. And then, their taste buds grow as years go by. Each begin to crave for particular foods. Your one main dish leaves at least one dissatisfied. The fun and games you shared with them as children no longer have any spark to their interest. Their friends become their importance, not you. Still, you think to give more.
Insatiable. That cup never gets filled. There will be days where you think in your part, you’ve filled the cup to overflow. In their eyes, even if the cup was filled, it wasn’t their cup to desire. You arrive to accept that, at times, you filled the wrong cup.
The difference between your own children and students? Yours are perfect by design up to when they decide to venture into what more or if anything else. Your students? You get that desire and so, have faith and hope each journey will take them individually to their rightful place. Your own children? You get that desire, but fear of all paths and possibilities that would get in the way.
You want to be that mother goose who holds her head up high when crossing the road as her goslings follow. You want to just keep moving along once a road has been crossed. You want your days to continue to be that simple as each graze the grass for sustenance.
There are just so much more to life than crossing roads and grazing, however. Your own memories remind you so.
You remember where you’ve been even though parts are still deeply buried. You dare not have your children go through the same. They will hate you for pushing or pulling them away from what at first looks innocuous in their eyes, but you risk that danger. You would rather be despised than to see your child fall into perilous grounds. You can only hope they will listen to avoid the unnecessary.
The child’s freedom to listen and follow is your ball in chains.
The difference between your students and your children receiving your words and actions is that while you trust you planted good seed in each of them, you invested endless days and nights and in between with your own.
Your own farmland is your harvest to own.
If your students stumble or falter in the near future, you will be saddened, but know you are severed from any direct responsibility. If your own children should do the same, even though knowing that at some point, they will get back up and keep moving forward for you exemplified and raised them to be strong, the connection eternally exists. In their greatest stumbles, you silently suffer and hurt most.
There is only so much you can do.
You have led. They have followed your ways to stay well and grounded. Like a mother goose, you always hold your head up high while crossing roads. The goslings behind you follow until their eyes wander, their heads turn, and eventually, they feel to go astray.
Now, you fly. Next lesson. Head up high.
