Posts Tagged ‘kids ’

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By:  Staci Stallings

I’ve been spending a lot of time with my kids lately, and one thing’s become very clear:  I did not decide what and how they were going to be.

Oh, sure.  I told them not to spill milk on the table and not to hit each other.  I sent them to school and made the mow the lawn.  But I did NOT get to decide what they love, what they hate, and how they were going to choose to inhabit this planet.

They are each a work unto themselves.

One loves to take pictures, which is something I also like, but not to the extent this one does.  I’m talking, capturing just the right lighting in just the right frame with just the right lens at just the right time.  And reading?  I love reading, but 374 pages in a week?  Even I can’t touch that.  Not to mention the things that one chooses to read.  History?  Mystery?  Uh. No.  Not for me, thank you very much.  She’s got her own way of studying (record everything and listen to it a gazillion times), her own way of competing (did you know you could compete to see who brought in the most phonebooks to recycle or the most canned food?), and her own way of organizing (if you saw her room, you would know what I mean!).

The second one seems the polar opposite of her sister, but is she?  Doing her best is key with this one, and her best is often “blow everyone else out of the water.”  Selling raffle tickets for school?  If the other “top sellers” are in the 40 or 60 range, 160 will be this one’s goal.  Studying cannot be done once.  Oh, no.  “Quiz me again, Mom” is her mantra (and I’m NOT looking forward to semester tests!).  Last night she sat down with me while I was designing a cover.  Guess who designed the cover (I’ll give you a hint:  It wasn’t me!).  She’s creative to a fault:  witness for example, the canned food sculpture she designed with towers for the castle and a dragon taped to a box of Corn Flakes at the top.  She loves to sing and play the violin and the piano and the guitar and the drums…  I love music too, but this one takes it to new heights I could never have even dreamed about!

And then there’s the little guy, who at 8 is getting MUCH bigger.  With this one, I have one word for you:  Electricity!  Snap Circuits were invented for this kid.  He can design his own light that really works, his own radio that really works, his own fan….  I thought the other day that since he loved electricity so much, I should tell him about Ben Franklin.  Well, I got, “He wanted to see about lightning so…” out.  To which my son said, “Oh, and he attached a key to a kite…”  and proceeded to tell me more about that story than even I knew.  When I asked him how he knew that, he replied, “I don’t know.  Doesn’t everybody?”

The coolest thing about my kids is how innately they live.  I don’t have to tell them what to be excited about.  They just are.   They are like little God masterpieces running around my house, showing me that God and the person can have it all figured out without me getting in the way.  Oh, there are still rules.  You still aren’t allowed to hit your sister, but I find the more I let them do what God sent them here to do, the less everything else is a problem.  They are having too much fun doing what God put in their hearts to do.

God is so cool!

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