Wise Parenting Advise: “Just Love Her” and Pause to Enjoy the Moment, Says It All

Here is a very sweet story my friend Mary Jo Saavadra wrote a couple years ago that captures pretty much everything that I think is important as a parent. For the complete story and many more blogs, Mary Jo has a wonderful site you can visit at http://mjstabletalk.blogspot.com/.

…..My 18-year-old daughter is in Lima, Peru, finishing high school at the American school and I have traveled far to be with her. Actually, to support her in what is so far the biggest effort of her young life. College aps, IB diploma classes, and a spicy Latina social life that would over heat the most seasoned teenager. This all being the result of her adamant pursuit to experience her dad’s culture and immerse herself with her extended Peruvian family.

My role is to keep the calm and promote a “can-do” environment. In the 18 years of parenting this child, excuse me, this grown woman, I have learned one thing: I learn what I need to know about her when I am quiet and still, or in-other-words, accessible. When I am available to her while she has the need to grind out her fears about growing up over scrambled eggs, to plop down and tell me her latest story of romance, or when she invites me to lay across her bed while she types out a paper on the computer, cross legged on the floor looking very serious. These are the moments, in the quiet of my day, when I’m ready for her call, that I discover what makes her tick.

My mother once gave me some rare parenting advice when I was confronted with some baffling problem, tantrums I think it was, she said, “Just love her” and went on about her business. Panic and fear set-in when I realized that I was going to get nothing more, no pop-psychology, no tried-and-true discipline techniques, only those simple words. That was it. Well, it took me a while to figure out just how this advise would help, but then I realized how this is what she did while raising me. She gave me the best part of herself, her constant and accessible love. She was always around when I needed her and she had 5 children, so this was no easy feat.

Now, I look back over my daughter’s 18 years and I can see the sustainable importance of this advice and its desired effect on both of us. It was not my job to control my daughter, but to love her into what she is already designed to become. Only by my example will she learn anything worthwhile about me, and what I have to teach. So, here I am in Peru, away from my envious husband, allowing for quiet moments in a foreign country with my daughter.

This finely developed skill of accessibility has given birth to a new gift, my observation skills. They have developed into a heightened appreciation of that which unfolds around me. Very much like the blind woman who can hear the hummingbird outside her window. In place of my corporate years of being over scheduled and driven, now I choose to put a pause button into my life. Both phases of life are sweet, but each is better enjoyed when hard choices are made and I don’t try to do it all.

With my skill in using this pause button I now notice the trees swaying in the back yard of my Portland home, or the smile on my dog’s face as he rolls with unabashed pleasure on his back hoping I will walk by and rub his tummy. Boring for some who have not developed this skill, but for those of us who have it there is unexpected delight in awareness at every corner. I have taken hold of my time by letting it go. My mother’s sweet words allowed me to learn the art of being in the moment, and my life is fuller, fuller in “the glass is half full” kind of way. For the first time in my life I am not missing a thing!…..