We spent the day on a mountain side.
Well, sort of. The boy’s Scout Pack had their ski trip today. It was supposed to have been last week but, you know, weather. I’d actually decided to postpone it to this week a day or so prior to the storm. Ironically, more snow was forecast for today. But only a dusting- maybe a couple of inches was supposed to fall. Amazing what 2 feet will do to establish perspective on snow fall.
In the end, a little snow fell this morning. Just enough to frost the trees and make the ride a pretty one, but it didn’t affect travel in the slightest.
So the kids spent the day in a group lesson and the Wife and I spent the day with other Pack parents who were non-skiers but wanted to take advantage of the Pack’s offer to let their kids learn to ski. It ended up being a pleasant day as we all had lunch together and kibitzed about all things parenting.
I have to say, even after having been a parent for almost 9 years now, I still love listening to other parents talk about their kids. When the kids were young, listening to other parents made me realize that very few, if any, of the trials we went through with ours were unique. Similarly, neither were our responses.
Listening to the parents today talking about their kids, I realized there is a bit of fine tuning to that thought. When considering the type of person a child is, it’s apparent that they can be broadly brushed into types that are amazingly similar from child to child. The kids who are afraid to fail; the kids who are happy go lucky; the kids who are bright; the kids who are athletic; the kids who get along with everyone.
Even though these 1000-foot views of our kids can make them all seem pretty similar, the differences start emerging pretty quickly once we start zooming in. Two athletic kids who have picked up totally different sports; two smart kids where one is stronger in math than the other; one kid afraid to fail at any sports related activity while another is afraid to fail in competition. These differences are important because the way one parent tries to address things must necessarily be different from the way another parents addresses a seemingly similar trait. Plus, how does the child take criticism? Another detail to consider.
There’s much to be learned from other parents. We all struggle with similar issues where kids are concerned. Sometimes, we get lucky by picking up on some insight in how to deal with certain types of behavior. Sometimes, we find out that our current approaches aren’t all that different.
We’re all on the same journey, but the paths are completely different.