Years ago we read that parenting children is like a funnel. In the early years, the wide end is around your children protecting them and giving them lots of boundaries and structure as you teach and train them. Your influence over them is great. As they grow though those boundaries get narrower and narrower as a funnel does. Your influence and protection needs to decrease. Our teens may or may not agree and think our funnel is still too wide, but it has been that philosophy that MWC and I have tried to keep in mind as we raise our children.
Raising teens while raising littles though gives me two oppositional funnels, resulting in an hourglass figure (if only my body had one!) and I'm trying to stay in the middle! Lessening that control over teens while still maintaining it over little ones is quite a juggling act for me who likes to have things orderly and under control.
Perhaps one day I'll get the balance right and then again, in just a few short years, my older chicks will have flown away to their own nests and I'll be back to just one directional funnel, missing my hourglass.
In the meantime though, I just hope my children know how much I love them and I'm doing my best to prepare them to fly away from my nest and soar on their own.
Monday, October 19, 2009
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