I had a couple visitors last weekend. They inspired this fb post
Is it really that mysterious? Spend a day or two, and through the night, with at least two people under the age of 7. You won’t have time to handle everything that comes up. Eating, sleeping, getting from one place to another, these are all major challenges. You will never get caught up. You will never have the house in order like the ones on TV, or like that room you weren’t supposed to go into when you were a child.
If you are doing this with another adult, you won’t have time to work out how the two of you could have handled the latest situation better, or have used a better “voice”, or could have taught something during a teachable moment. If you manage to get started on that conversation, the cat gets stepped on, a toy doesn’t get shared, a hand gets caught in a closing door, or something happens that leads to crying and you don’t know what it is.
Repeat that 6,574 ½ times, and they are technically adults, and your job is done. You are older, and if you are lucky, wiser, you can send them into the world and hope you did something right. If you were right a few times, you won’t want to let them go while knowing you should. If you have more than luck, there will be grace, gratefulness, memories, and a few moments to enjoy it all. And I’m assuming this is all happening surrounded by a reasonably peaceful and wealthy world. For too many, that’s a dream. Is it any wonder why people say the latest generation is lazy and doesn’t work, and that same latest generation says the previous one didn’t do its job, and we spend our days working out the questions that arose generations ago?