Photo by William Iven on Unsplash
When I stepped foot into kindergarten I didn’t know how to read. I didn’t have an expectation that I should know how to read. I didn’t believe I’d know how to read after the first day of school.
Yet in life that is what we do to ourselves. We expect we should be good at everything. We should know how to do things. And if we don’t know how to do something we better master it ASAP.
We forget the hard work that goes into rolling over, scooching on our bellies, army-crawling, standing, taking a few steps, walking, running.
We think we should have parented each child of ours making no mistakes. We question our decisions. We blame ourselves or others when things go wrong.
I love the babies progression to a child walking analogy because it’s so easy to wrap our brains around. The baby tries to walk and falls. She doesn’t beat herself up for not doing it perfectly on the first try. She gets up and tries again and again and again. There might be some tears and scuffed knees, but that’s okay.
Try to look at parenting that way. There is going to be some fails. There are going to be some successes. There are going to be some try and try agains. There will probably be some tears and owies, but that’s okay.
Alma 12:24 says, “Therefore this life became a probationary state; a time to prepare to meet God.”
This is our time. Our time to figure things out. We weren’t expected to be running from the get-go. We are learning. This is our learning ground. Maybe we’ve got some Ds or Fs on our parenting report card. It’s okay. We can learn from our experiences.
I’ve been helping my 2nd grader grandson with language arts. How do you explain how to sound out or spell “enough” or “their” or “busy?”
Some things just don’t make sense! And then when we think we are figuring it out, the word “through” comes along. We have to rethink everything we know about the sound “gh” makes.
You know why? Because this is the learning ground. What we learn with one kid doesn’t apply to the next child. Just when we think we have things figured out, we learn something new.
Being Eternal Life material is going to be no joke. So we can only assume the curriculum to get us there is going to be no joke. Fortunately we have a very patient and kind Teacher who knows the lesson plan and wants us to succeed.
Don’t plan on making straight As. Don’t plan on never being late to class. Don’t plan on being the most popular kid in the school. Plan on it being a learning experience. One where you keep building upon what you’ve learned before. If you are doing that, just know that you are doing it right.
