Kids Come Prefabricated

This morning, on the beach, Chloe and Brett created a hermit crab playpen in the sand.  Brett came and went bringing all sorts of critters to the hermit crab playground.  He carefully collected seaweed, checking it for marine life, and placed it gently in the playpen.

A young boy runs by and sees the creation.  He violently tramples the playpen and throws the seaweed in all directions.  Brett walks up just in time to see the horror and runs over to me, falls to his knees hiding his face in his hands, and begins to cry.  Not the fake whine that accompanies everything else in his life, but a heart wrenching cry as if his whole life's work had just been destroyed. And well, it had.

I took this opportunity to talk to him about talking through the situation.  I tell him to talk to the boy and ask why he was destroying his work.  Chloe comes over and sees the destruction and her brother crying and marches over to the child.  I tell her to ”call off the dogs” as I see the rage in her face.  she storms over to me as I'm telling Brett, ”When someone hurts your feelings...”  Chloe finishes my statement, ”...you punch them in the face.”  Uh, well, not quite.  I finally finish my statement, ” you need to use your words and talk it out.”   Chloe walks off and I'm not sure Brett really thinks my advice is worthwhile. 

I wanted to throw the kid in the ocean and say, ”Ooops!”  That wouldn't be using my words.  Luckily when he was flinging seaweed in all directions he threw some on a pregnant woman and the kid' s grandpa FINALLY intervened.  I'm sure all this kid really wanted was someone's attention.

When I dreamed of what my kids would be when they were born, I dreamed Chloe would be a beautiful dancer and cheerleader and Brett would be the football star.  Chloe is beautiful alright, but she loathes dance and cheer and prefers to read encyclopedias in her spare time.  Brett would rather be fishing...
These kids are prefabricated in the womb and they come out ready made. 

Sometimes they have eight fingers or nine toes.  They are not always what we imagined.  They don't always do what we want them to do even though we have taught then right from wrong, but our job is to love them no matter what obstacle arises.

I love every bit of them even though they aren't what I imagined they would be.  They are so much more than I ever dreamed.