Hello from the author!
"Raising Amazing Children (...While Having a Life of Your Own)" Deborah Drezon Carroll:
Our
daughter's wedding was a glorious event for us, as you might imagine.
After it was over, though, one thing stuck in my mind. People, our
friends and other guests whom we didn’t know, repeatedly came up to us
and said, "“Your daughters are amazing. What's your secret?"”
While
that is a beautiful sentiment, and may even be true (if I do say so
myself), I wondered: Are they really amazing? We have three daughters
who are really just lovely people with good hearts and good souls. They
weren't exceptional students (they were good students for the most part)
or outstanding athletes (they did try, though); they didn't cure cancer
in our basement, or discover the secret to solving the world hunger
problem. They didn't win scholarships or attend Ivy League colleges.
They just were good kids (most of the time but certainly not without
challenges along the way) who grew up to be teachers.
And that’'s when I realized: maybe they are amazing.
If
the goal of being a good parent is to do the job well enough for our
kids to leave us someday and be happy people who are independent and
live with integrity and decency, and if achieving that is amazing, maybe
we were all amazing.
I thought about how we achieved such greatness. What was our parenting secret? My
husband and I had both been teachers early in our careers. We learned a
great deal about how children develop. We learned strategies for
facilitating growth in young people by treating them with respect,
trust, faith, and high expectations. And, when we had our first child we
got some very good advice. The advice was to find ways to integrate our child into our lives
rather than turning our lives completely upside down to integrate
ourselves into our child’'s life. In other words, we were advised to
raise our kids while living life the way we loved it before our kids
were born as much as possible. We were told to find ways to keep doing
the things we loved so we could share them with our kids. And so we did.
Whatever we did, we invited our kids to do it with us. From cleaning
the house to traveling across the country on a camping trip (Yes, we did
go on a cross country trip with three kids under the age of 5!), if it
was something we did before we had kids, we did it with our kids. We
tried not to give up any of the things that mattered to us before we
became parents, we just found ways to incorporate our children into
those activities.
As a result, our
children learned life skills by experiencing life with us. They learned
to love reading and writing as we do so they value education. They can
do simple home repair, they all did their own laundry since they were
very little, and each can negotiate a tight deal of any sort. They
understand the value of work and the need to budget money as they
watched us do both and learned by seeing our struggles and our
successes. They learned compassion and caring for family, friends, and
strangers as they lived both on a daily basis. In short, they learned
how to live life by living it with us and witnessing the ins and outs of
making a life work.
I wrote this
book in order to share what I've learned with others who want to enjoy
parenting while raising "amazing" kids. The simple tasks of everyday
living provide parents with opportunities to teach children something of
value each day. By inviting your kids to work alongside as you do
things like shopping, housecleaning, gardening, cooking, home repair,
traveling and more, you both win. You'll save time as you'll have
helping hands to get the jobs done faster, your child will learn
priceless life skills, and you'll all have more time to enjoy life
together. By incorporating your
kids into your life, you get to continue living a life that makes you
happy. Happy parents raise happy children. Your kids will thank you for
it… some day!
Raising Amazing Children (…While Having a Life of Your Own). The title sums up our parenting secret. To learn more about me and my book, visit deborahdrezoncarroll.com I also blog about fitness and good health. If you're interested in that, please visit thejoyoffitness.wordpress.com
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