Do you ever worry about being fair to your children? Not in the “life isn’t fair don’t complain” kind of way. It’s more of the “am I giving myself equally to each of my children?” kind of fair. Is it ridiculous to believe that you will be? Is it fair to yourself to be so worried about it?
Whether or not I’m being fair to myself, I’m been thinking a lot about how I work for and treat both of my daughters.
My oldest is a ridiculously busy child. Water Polo, soccer, softball…a very demanding school and homework schedule. We are constantly driving her from one place to the next. She needs to pick up this supply for a project that is due. She needs a book for English. There’s a fundraising even for her travel softball team. Oh, and can we take her to school early tomorrow? She’s making cupcakes for her softball coach and she needs to drop them off early.
She’s good at pretty much everything she touches. But holy crap, that child is busy. Busy Beezus. And so are her parents. We do our best to keep up.
But is her first-born status, and therefore the first to achieve many of these activities, fair to her younger sister?
Ramona isn’t quite so driven. But there are times that I worry that it is because Beezus did everything first. Why bother if someone has already perfected it? I might be reading more in to it than I should, but I can’t help it. I worry that Ramona feels like she gets the short end of the stick. She doesn’t need to be running from one thing to the next, so we don’t? But have we given her enough chances to try?
I’m trying to remind myself that Beezus wasn’t this busy when she was 10. She really wasn’t. But even with their age gap (almost five years) I worry that Ramona will be so sick of living in her sister’s shadow, she won’t even want to try.
(And now I want to go back and see how many times I used the word worry in the post. It’s a ridiculous number of times, I know it. I just can’t seem to help myself. I’m a really good worrier.)
The reason why I write any of this out at all is to help myself process the worry. And come up with a solution and a plan of action. Of course I should be worried about my children, but I shouldn’t let it overshadow the awesome individuals that they are.
And I think that right there is the answer.
We have a job as parents to care and nurture these beings we were blessed with. Their personalities are so unique, they deserve equally unique life experiences.
I need to stop trying to make it fair and focus so much more energy on making it unique. Yes…uniqueness. That’s quite a focus.
And, for heaven sakes, I need to stop with all the worry. That’s just no help at all.