Dear Mum,
When I was little you let me play with the Lego and build huge tall buildings. You moved my beautiful mess from room to room, trying to keep one area tidy. I noticed that you redid sections that probably fell down when you moved them but I didn’t mind. It bothered me more when my brother changed it. He had his own stuff and should leave mine alone.
Love, your son.
Imagine receiving a note or something like this from your future child. Maybe they’ve become an engineer , into construction or an architect.
Have you noticed that many stages we look forward to in fear?
……. the terrible twos
……… wait until they start answering back in the tween years
…………. just wait for those teenage years
………………then they leave home but keep coming back for something.
Let’s change that today with a little forward thinking warmth. Instead of how to react to a terrible two or a wayward teen what about how we will continue to build character. What do we want our future child to have by the time they leave our homes?
Let’s work backwards.
Dream our future child
If you could dream a future dream about each of your children what vision would you see? What type of person? What are they doing? I’m not thinking just of the their occupation more about their personality, outlook and who they are as a person. If the person they are now is magically 20 year later what would you see? It’s from this vision I want to work from.
Not fear.
For our family it would mean we work on sharing, empathy, excellence, humor in adversity, keep on keeping on, patience and our list goes on. For our sons to be the men we wish them to be is a better way of preparing to meet the future.
When you talk to your partner today about your future children, dream a little together about who they will be. It doesn’t have to be limiting and restricting. It gave us a lot of insight into the direction of who he might be, the friends he may move towards and the paths we might choose.
This post is part of 31 days of growing family conversations. Today on Day 11 we’re looking at imagining the future dreams and life of our children thinking beyond the fear of all the terrible stages but seeing the vision and working backwards to how we get there with each child. You’ll be pretty amazed at how your vision and your partners match and are different. You’ll learn lots about yourself and your kids in the discussion.
Conversation: Imagine your child 20 years from now- what does that look like? Who are they? What personality, temperament and values?
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I was a hyper-parent. I worked SO HARD at it, loving my kids but at the same time, wondering how they would turn out; oh my gosh! I must be doing so many things wrong! Guess what? My kids turned out totally awesome. They all graduated from college, have terrific careers making good money, married people I adore and are also phenomenal parents. Shocker.
I loved/love them insanely, and that, along with education and faith, is the best recipe for turning out nice, productive adults.
Oh, don’t worry! They are human, and we have dysfunction just like every other family in the world. But you know what? We are able to recognize it, work on it, get better — all with tears, laughter, and kisses.
My kids didn’t turn out exactly the way I imagined. They are better: strong, resourceful, independent and loving. What more could a parent ask?