When they are very small, we give them warmth, snuggles and, in some cases, if we’re lucky, breast milk.
Before their first birthday, we are giving them excuses for why we won’t eat the mushy food they are trying so generously to share with us and giving them back their tiny spoons that SOMEHOW keep ending up on the floor.
As our children grow up, go to school, make friends, and test our limits, we try our damnedest to give them nuggets of wisdom at each step along the way, finding random opportunities to casually share with them some of the knowledge we accumulated by making horrendous mistakes living a full life.
While not a definitive list of all the insights I intend to bestow upon my daughters as they enter their ‘tween’ years, here are 16 prominent pieces of information I hope they will let marinate in their brilliant minds as they morph into young adults.
1. You don’t need to eat food out of a box or a bag that’s handed to you out of a tiny window on the side of a building. That with a handful of ingredients, a bit of want-to and a few spare moments, you can make just about anything from scratch, especially whipped cream which requires only three ingredients plus five minutes of very active arm muscles, and is so very worth it, especially when the chocolate chip pancakes you’ve just made from scratch for dinner are still warm. But that sometimes, a box of mac-n-cheese after a long day IS the best option, but toss some frozen peas in there too to make grandma happy.
2. Those impossibly happy people in commercials, on billboards and in magazine ads are being paid to look that happy. If you don’t need what they are selling, and to be honest, you probably don’t, you do not have to want it or buy it.
Top Comments
Proudly living my life by number 8 (not just the trolley part) and number 9. And teaching my children to do the same.
That is really lovely (except you only need one ingredient to make whipped cream)