Never Say Never - In parenting we learn too

                        If there is something having kids does to you is it teaches you to never say 'never'. Back in the day at the beginning of my mommy journey, I had no idea that through the course of being a mom I would be forced to become an expert on things I would have never dreamed of or ever cared for. Currently, my daughter, who is 5, is obsessed with Justin Beiber. She loves to learn lyrics to songs she hears and on youtube they often have the song paired with lyrics making it easier to help me help her learn words to her favorite song. It was one video of him singing and she began asking me to search out more of his songs....and the rest id history. It was THAT fast. For those of you who would not be able to pick this guy up from a line-up, think of me!!....I could not either, about 2 months ago. Now, I know ALL about this young celebrity, and I must admit, I actually think he's quite talented. I now know all his lyrics, I would easily be able to pick out which songs are sung by him, plus, I know lots of miscellaneous facts about the young man that now fill my head for no reason other than to be able to communicate and speak with my daughter on her interests. 

                 Now, don't think for a New York minute that you are exempt to this phenomenon. this experience I just described is not an exception to the rule, this experience is not a singular, one-time, freak incident of parenthood, this is a reality for ALL parents, plus, it happens many, many times, as the child grows. To illustrate, when my son was one and half he was obsessed with school buses, then trucks, then trash trucks, then construction trucks. Oh, how we'd run to the front door of our home each trash-pick-up day and observe the trash being hauled away and the school children being whisked away to school. We'd all wave frantically at any and all yellow buses as if someone we knew or loved was each of them. Furthermore, my husband and I learned the official name of all the trucks on any given construction site and bought videos and books pertaining to the world of trucks. Now that he is eight we are also experts in baseball, football, outer space, Einstein, basic physics and the list goes on and on. 

             You might go into child-rearing with a certain plan, a certain idea of how YOU are going to run this 'ship'. But we soon learn that we are not in control of who this little person wants to become. We find that the word 'never' has no place or power in this new reality. For example, I went into parenting thinking ' I am not a sports fan, I hate organized sports', but just a few short years later, I am  cheering like a crazy woman at your son's Little League baseball games and simply loving it. You see, this reality of parenting is not by any means a negative thing, on the contrary, it is an absolutely wonderful thing to go through (if you have the right perspective). Allowing the narrative of your child to unfold as his soul intended makes child-rearing into a true adventure for us. It breaks us open from our own pre-set, self-imposed limitations and makes us better. We soon abandon our need to make this child into anything we thought up and come to realize that he came here with his own set of instructions, and we are just there to provide support.  I strongly propose having fun with it and staying wide open for becoming, in essence, love. For it's this deep love for our family and our little ones that help mold us, slowly into much more open human beings.