The Gifts We Give our Children (and Main Characters)
This Christmas I gave the children lots of stuff. Sparkly stuff, shiny stuff, shrill sounding stuff, swirling stuff and stuffed stuff. They are pretty good wonderful kids, and I am lucky to be able to give them these gifts. by foxumon via sxc.hu But it got me thinking about the other gifts I can give my children - self esteem, compassion, responsibility to name a few. I'm a pretty good fantastic Mom. And sometimes I am spectacular, evoking my days as a 4-H camp counselor. But when I'm tired, overwhelmed, it's Monday, or any other number of situations, I can be a real lousy lady. I'm reading the 10 Greatest Gifts I Give my Children by Steven W. Vannoy and hoping to store some of the tips in my parenting purse for those too-frequently-occurring lousy occasions. I was struck by how consistent the advice for raising kids is with advice on writing for kids, such as: Let kids develop their own solutions when problems strike...