Why not an Olympics ceremony where parents get medals, too?
Think about it. Olympic athletes start out as kids with dreams. They get immersed in intensive training long before they can drive. Someone has to get them from home to the practice facility.
Guess who.
Mom watches and cheers from the bleachers or dozes in her car. Every day she packs lunches, hands out Gatorade and energy bars and launders smelly towels and athletic duds. Her ready supply of hugs, encouragement and consolation never runs dry.
Take Debbie Phelps, for example. The mother of Michael Phelps, winner of eight gold medals, got him into swimming when he was age seven. Every day she chauffeured him and his two older sisters, also Olympics hopefuls, back and forth to the practice facility. Holidays? Vacations? Uh-uh.
Finding this kind of focus can be a godsend
Both mother and son have talked freely about Michael's early diagnosis of ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Diagnosis.) She describes the young Michael as "a burst of energy . . . a local irritant."
Swimming became his release. Michael took to swimming naturally, perhaps because he turned out to have a mind and body just right for the sport. Debbie, a divorced mom, says she simply kept him pointed in the right direction.
(Any parent of an ADHD child would understand how much courage and determination that required.)
Debbie taught school for thirty years and is the principal of a Baltimore middle school. In recent years she became something of a celebrity in her own right. She believes every child needs an outlet. It doesn't matter whether it's sports or science, music or art, or a hands-on skill of some sort. Finding the activity that fits--and fills--is key.
When Tom Brokaw interviewed Debbie Phelps in 2008 she offered three principles of parenting.
- Love your kids.
- Steer them in the right direction.
- Give them right values.
What's missing here?
I agree with Debbie Phelps' advice, but I think she omitted what enables a parent to carry out those three principles: faith in God.
- Where can we find enough love to carry on despite frustrations and difficultes?
Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. --1 John 4:17
- With distractions and competing experts on all sides, how can we know which direction is "right?"
Your word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. --Psalm 119:105
- How can we discern which values are "right?"
Jesus said, "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." --John 8:31
People have turned to the Bible for centuries, looking for answers. And finding them.
Better than gold medals
Loving through all the ups and downs takes all we've got and then some. Eventually most faithful moms and dads earn something much more satisfying than any medal. We can't hold it in our hands or display it in a trophy case, but it's real.
The warm glow it brings starts the first time we look at our adult children and realize we not only love them, we like them.
Trust me, that's a lasting reward worth all the love and effort you give.
Love,
Lenore
