Again, I am the Student
I don’t know about you, but I tend to analyze my parenting quite a bit. In all honesty, I analyze every facet of my behavior and my thoughts more than I should, but, being a parent, the am-I-a-sucky-parent thoughts are usually front and center.
Today was a mixed results day. We usually have a co-op class with our local homeschooling group on Mondays. Today’s co-op was a kick-ass crafting session to make medieval/renaissance costumes for the kids to wear on our upcoming field trip to the Renaissance Faire.
Our fearless leader for today (and you have to be fearless when you’re facing a room full of 2-7 year-olds and telling them to use fabric glue) came up with awesome costumes for knights and ladies.
So there I was, trying to take in the instructions for both the knight and lady costumes, handle the uber-whiny three-year-old, keep the seven-year-old from running in the classroom, keep the fabric scissors from the neighboring small one… you get the picture. I had my hands full of fabric glue, fabric paint, sharpie markers, sharp implements, and metal brads that will skewer your fingers, and, of course… disaster.
The knight costume’s crest was cut out, fabric-glued on, and outlined and decorated with fabric paint – and drying. On the table. Why yes, that is the table within reach of every hand in the room. Umm, yes, including the hands that are currently running by the table full speed, waving shields, helmets, and the occasional piece of fabric fruit.
You, having the benefit of my foreshadowing skills, may be able to guess what happened. But in case you are distracted by my run-on sentences, I’ll spell it out for you. The knight’s shirt was suddenly lying in a lump on the floor – in a sticky, blue-and-silver-and-glue pool of stain on the carpet. Fabric paint was everywhere – spread all over the shirt, on the chairs, table and aforementioned carpet. The perfectly designed masterpiece of decorated cotton was ruined.
I was pissed. I kind of lost it, in an attachment-parenting, other-parents-are-watching-this sort of way. I was mad at our ruined work, at our painstaking attention to detail wasted. I huffed and puffed as I cleaned up the paint, wiped down the carpet, chair and table.
But Max? He said “Hey, it’s okay, mommy! We’ll just add some more paint and make it super-sparkly! It will look cool!”
And, right there, my kid bested his mom. He had the calm, look-on-the-bright-side, positive attitude that I should have mastered. He faced the lemons and made an amazing lemonade. And he did it all with a big smile on his face. He went to work with the fabric paint and made a creation all his own, with lots of extra swirls and swishes. He was thrilled. I was thrilled, and humbled.
I know they say that kids teach their parents just as much as the parents teach their kids. Max taught me today, and I am so proud to be his parent, his teacher, and his student.