My Jonah turns eleven months old tomorrow. My little moosh is nearly a year old! I know I was told over and over before he was born and even during these eleven months, how quickly time will pass, but what I wasn't told was how different every single week of every single one of those months would be from each other. How quickly their little personalties become apparent. How quickly they learn and grow and develop!
I've found myself recently saying over and over again 'he's only been doing that for the past week or two!' At first I didn't really notice but recently I started thinking I was sounding like a broken record until I realized that each time I said it, it was about something different - "he's only been crawling for a week or two", "he's only been pulling himself up for about a week or two", "he's only just started interacting with us in the last week or so", "he just started repeating things we do and even sometimes things we say about a week ago", etc. Instead of feeling like a broken record, it made me realize how drastically their little bodies and brains are changing in such a short period of time.
Me and a few of my friends have been reading this book recently called No Drama Discipline and in the second chapter it talks about how every child's brain is changeable, changing and complex ("The Three C's"). It explains this in many contexts, but one is to help parents have patience and compassion when their children are reactive (as in when their emotions are taking control of their bodies) rather than receptive (as in when we can sit down and have a conversation with them about what happened) and to understand that not only are their brains constantly changing and extremely complex, but they are also changeable. So if we respond to their reactiveness with compassion and love and connection (rather than anger and/or lectures and/or our own reactiveness) we have the ability to help their little brains change and become more capable of dealing with those big emotions.
I definitely want to reread this book when Jonah is a bit older as it's not so relevant to him right at this exact moment but it has so many things I want to keep in mind as he grows. Anyways, I was thinking how much compassion and understanding we have for a child under the age of two or three, because their growth is so tangible! It's so easy to see that their brains are all of these 'C's.' But how sometimes, the older a child is, the more we forget that they also are still growing and building connections and that those connections are able to be changed. We also forget that those changes we wish for will manifest themselves far more quickly if we respond to their misbehavior by seeking connection, acknowledging their struggles, listening to them, and helping them understand and learn to moderate their own feelings.
In truth I think we forget that all these things are still true into adulthood. That we as human beings are extraordinarily complex, that our brains are always changing and are always changeable. Not to say we can look at the way we think, say we want to change it and snap our fingers and we're there (if only that was possible!!!). But it is possible to change our thought patterns and our actions and reactions. So often we berate ourselves for not being who we wish we were, rather than seeking connection first - finding our truth, our nobility, the beautiful people we were put on this earth to be, and then seeking to grow with that as our mold. We also forget to do this with others. To look for and find their truth, their nobility, the beautiful people they were put on this earth to be.
I've often thought of children as seeds planted in the soil of God's love. The thing is, just because I grew to be an apple tree, doesn't mean that is the seed that God planted in my son or my husband or my close friends, or even my parents or my brother! It is not my responsibility to raise my son to be an apple tree as well. It is my responsibility to make sure that his physical needs are met (that he receives water and sun and nutrients and light, etc), that his spiritual needs are met (that he receives love and knowledge and guidance and is shown what true beauty is, etc), and that as he grows I guide his branches or leaves or petals or whatever he becomes towards the Light and I make sure first to shelter him from and then to teach him that though there will be storms and shadows, they don't need to affect his growth or his vibrancy. But nowhere in there do I get to decide what plant he will be. God decided that long before he was given to me. I am tasked with making sure that plant grows and bears fruit and continues to draw closer to the Light.
I feel like this imagery can be so helpful in looking within ourselves - for how can I compare myself to others (and find myself wanting) if I come from a different seed, if I was made to blossom and grow in a different mold? For the same reason it is also very helpful in looking at others around us. For it is easy to look at my husband or my close friends or my family and think, 'well I'm bearing this kind of fruit, they should be too' or 'we're meant to look like this or act like this or be like this' etc. Only, it's not true, I can't know what kind of seed was planted in each of those people, nor can I know the quality of the soil it was planted in or the amount of nurturing both physical and spiritual they received growing up, so as a result I can't know exactly what 'drawing towards the Light' looks like in them.
I've been teaching a preschool class over the past year (just once or twice a week for the children of a couple friends here) and this last week we were working on counting and the kids taught me a quote that they had learned in children's classes over the weekend. I feel like it, and the rest of the quote that surrounds it, is an appropriate way to end this post as it reminds us what we should be looking for in our children and in one another:
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