Skip to main content

Family Matters


Even though my oldest child is only three-years-old, I have a hard time remembering what life was like before kids. Sure, it is exhausting sometimes, but it is so worth it. Not a day goes by that I don’t laugh out loud about something one of my kids does or says. Kids truly do say the darndest.

My kids certainly help keep me grounded and they don’t care if I had a bad day, they love me just the same. I don’t think any of us can truly understand unconditional love until they have their own kids. Even when they mess up and do something bad, we still love them and want the best for them. I was having a conversation with my advisory the other day about their attitude toward their parents. They sometimes feel like their parents don’t love them or they treat them too harshly. I reminded them that their parents are usually acting out of love and fear. I think that teenagers begin to think of their parents as the evil empire, only to realize when they are 25 that they are actually pretty cool people who love them very much.

Now on to some lighter things…

The other morning I woke my daughter up to get her to the babysitter and she immediately rolled out of bed and said, “Dada, I want to take my shopping cart.” I replied, “Huh? What are you talking about?” She responded, “I’m going to count to 3 and then you are going to be in big trouble if you don’t take my shopping cart.” She then proceeded to walk downstairs and put on her shoes, never saying another word about the shopping cart….

My son, who is 11 months old, just started walking, although he still crawls most places because he can get there faster that way, is already mischievous. He loves making a dash for the stairs when the gate hasn’t been closed and then stopping halfway to make sure you are chasing. He looks at you with that silly grin and takes off again. He then proceeds to laugh hysterically once you catch him.

Those two instances sound like really meaningless events in the grand scheme of things, but they are anything but. This is when I’m truly in my element and happy. Playing alongside my giggling, happy children makes me forget about the stresses of the day and the to-do list facing me the next. Children truly live in the moment, and I think we could learn a thing or two from them about a positive attitude and being present in the moment. Being a dad has been one of the greatest gives I have ever received and I have to remind myself daily to cherish every moment. It has also made me cherish the time I have with my parents and the opportunities they have provided for my siblings and me.


Thank you for indulging me in a moment of self-reflection about being a dad.


Sibling Love...I guess
Anderson
Josie


Comments

  1. Aw! This is so cute! Family is so important. I love reading your blogs:) They make me smile.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Your kids are super cute

    ReplyDelete
  3. YOUR KIDS ARE ADORABLE

    ReplyDelete
  4. Your children are adorable!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Learning to Grow

Sometimes being vulnerable and taking a risk in front of our students is the best thing educators can do. I have decided to go on a writing journey with my students through the use of this blog. They each have a blog, and we will all post a weekly blog to tell stories, communicate ideas, make arguments, and expand our horizons. One of the questions I ask myself on a daily basis is, how can I make myself better today? No, I’m not upset with who I am as a husband, father, teacher, and friend, but it’s about being the best that I can be. It’s about embracing the process, working doggedly toward our goals and our passions and developing strong relationships along the way. My students and I will share our passions, goals, successes, and failures through our blogs. We will continue to work toward developing higher character, which means demonstrating more kindness, more gratitude, and more persistence. We will work toward developing these qualities while chasing our passions and develo...

The Need to Recognize Our Strengths

How many of you wake up every day and think about what your strengths are?   Not a single hand went up when I asked this question during class yesterday.  Full disclosure, my hand would have remained down as well.  The assignment began with me asking the students what their strengths were, not just academically but in general.  This proved to be a difficult task for some, and when the students asked me to disclose my strengths, I then began to empathize with the difficulty of the assignment.   Why is it so difficult to identify and discuss our strengths?  Maybe it is because we are too busy worrying about everything that could go wrong in our day, the stresses we have, our comparisons to others, or maybe it just seems too vain to point out the great things about ourselves.  Although the lesson began slowly, students began to think outside the box and feel good about the strengths they were writing down on paper.  Then came the sharing, and ...

Looking For Opportunities to be Kind

When I set out to write about positivity and kindness, I had been trying to think of ways that I could get my students thinking about putting others before themselves. I love that the 12th-grade Learning Strategies class has a year-long project that requires the students to “pay-it-forward” and to complete several random acts of kindness throughout the school year. My goal, sometime this quarter, is to have my English students think of ways they can do this in their own school community in order to tag along with what they are doing in learning strategies. This could even be an opportunity to develop some ideas for how they will approach their acts of kindness for Learning Strategies. Recently, CBS posted a story on their website that showed how two students decided to give new clothes and shoes to a 9th-grade student, Michael, who had been bullied for wearing the same outfit every day because that is all his family could afford. Students had laughed at him and mocked him for hi...