Parenting is set up as a job of teaching. You teach them to talk, to share, to love…to stop putting their hands in the dog's bowl. But what catches parents off guard is how much of the teaching runs the other way.
Our children teach us.
So we put the question to moms: what are your kids teaching you? A couple of the answers are simply funny. Most describe a child catching something their mother had missed, and a mother who is grateful for it.
There are no exact timelines
Christina Cosgrove's oldest was a slow reader. He did not learn to read until he was nearly ten, which is late enough to worry any parent, and long enough for a mother of fourteen to have watched plenty of other children get there sooner. He now reads Shakespeare and War and Peace for pleasure. All children learn differently, she says, and she learned it from him.
For Tailynn Brost, the lesson came from her son, who has Down syndrome: Life does not have to follow a timeline to be beautiful. She credits him with most of what she knows about patience and gratitude, and with the habit of celebrating small victories that would otherwise get rushed past.
On the flipside, some kids go faster than parents, or the Tooth Fairy, might expect. Aubrey Williams's daughter pulled out her own baby tooth before it was loose. When asked why, she explained that she “wanted more money.”
Kids recover faster than you do
Lucia Pinto spent ten days in the NICU with her baby, and has been through the ordinary run of childhood health scares since. What surprised her was the speed of the turnaround. Kids are insanely resilient, she says, and recovery happens faster than you think.
A variation from the parent’s plan can be a great thing
Myria Dinkins learned to pick her battles by giving up a few small ones on purpose. Mismatched clothes are fine. So are rain boots on a sunny day. Letting her children make those calls lets them express themselves, and makes her own day less stressful.
Mary Williams used to want a spotless house. Her family still cleans up, but she has stopped reading the state of the house as a verdict on herself.
Zoya Alam says that she’s learned from her kids that there is always something to laugh about and that things do not have to be perfect to be special.
Emily Smith shares that even when she’s planned a special vacation or outing, the moments she did not plan are the ones her children remember.
Slowing down is always worth it
Esra Gürayman says her kids have her noticing a tiny flower, a funny cloud, five extra minutes of cuddles. Roxci Vergara says her kids have taught her that most things can wait.
Lucimere Silva says her daughters taught her patience, and how to find happiness in the plain parts of a day. Natalie Minarich echoes this and says her kids have shown her the value of patience over everything.
Bianca Morriello shared that her children gave her back a kind of curiosity about the world.
Kids are constantly learning, and teaching, too
Raysa Anjos says her kids remind her every day that they are still learning, and that she is the one who is supposed to be doing the teaching.
Cristina Alewelt’s answer is the one that should come with a warning label. Children observe and absorb far more than we give them credit for. They listen to everything we say, she says, and they act the way we act.
Which is the whole arrangement, really. Everyone in the house is teaching, and everyone is picking things up. Stephanie Mentore-Blanc’s line covers what happens after that: once you think you have the hang of it, something new is coming.
