A Magical Childhood

This post has been circulating around Facebook this week, and it took me a few days to formulate my thoughts on the matter.

Here are things you should do as a parent, if you're so inclined:
1) Scour Pinterest and recreate All of the Things that you find there, to the last detail. Bonus points if you add glitter, as I personally find it to be the herpes of the craft world.

2) Create elaborate leprechaun traps, and leave evidence for your children that there has been a mythical creature in your home. 

3) Engage in a different elf-on-the-shelf tactic every night between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Make it as far-fetched as possible.

Here are things you shouldn't do as a parent, if you don't want to:
1) All of the above.

If you want to send your kids outside for hours at a time, go for it. If you'd rather spend hours at the table creating masterpieces from macaroni, yarn, and patience, do it. Why does it have to be one or the other? I don't feel like less of a mother because I have friends who are capable of creating beautiful things from thin air. It's their thing. Good for them. I do what I can when I can. I have different strengths. 

Childhood is inherently magical for kids whose parents give a crap about them. "Making magic" for them is an extension of how some parents show their love. My dad cooked for us, and that was his love. Hours spent slaving over a hot stove, delivering delicious meals to the table when we KNEW he'd much rather be chilling in the recliner with a glass of Jack and a good book. He did all of that to show his love for us, and we felt it with every bite. Other parents spend hours creating elaborate worlds for hand-crafted fairies.

Put energy in to your kids. Play with them, or don't. Craft with them, or don't. Decorate for every holiday under the sun, or none. Just love them the best way you know how. 

Here's a secret I've gleaned from 10.5 years of parenting 5 wildly different children...there is no secret. 

Do what you can with what you have, and hope your children will choose a nice home for you when you become senile and incontinent. 

Love them. 

Love their imperfections; their tantrums, their hugs, their kisses, their attitude, their smirks, and their failings. 

Love their dimples, and skinned knees, and bruised foreheads, and crooked hairline because they wiggled during their last haircut. 

Love their teen angst, and lies, and deceit. 

Love their honesty, and vulnerability, and the way their 14 year old arms, that reach well above your head, wrap so delicately around you when they need reassurance...reminding you, painfully, of their chubby toddler arms. 

Love all of it. 

The good, the bad, the ugly. This is what life is. This is what it means to be a parent. This is what we're called to do when we bring a new life in to the world.