Nurturing Individuality

Published at Caribbean Belle

I remember the days when I had just two kids, I was so confident that I was a pretty good parent, you know, the kind who seldom gave her kids chocolate or candy, who always fed them enough vegetables, who had creative solutions to disciplinary issues, who would never feed them fries or other “unhealthy junk” – and then I had a third kid! The one, who at 1 and a half years old, eats and does things that my eldest didn’t until he was 3!

A third baby really changes the family dynamic, it’s the start of ‘them’ vs ‘us’, it’s no longer an equal battlefield, and the hardest thing is sometimes trying to give each one the attention he deserves. The most obvious changes for me is that my middle child seems to be the one who is always left out, the little one is about a million times more spoilt than his brothers are, and the eldest, I must admit, has turned into a bit of a tyrant! I couldn’t tell you specifically what makes having 3 kids seem like sooo much more than just having 2 kids, but for sure this number seems to really deter babysitting volunteers!

Having the three babies of the same gender made it really easy for me to just treat them all as a “unit”, with blatant disregard for their individuality. In the past year however, as I’ve watched them grow up into little boys, I’ve realized that as much as they totally enjoy one another’s company, they really crave some alone time with both their father and me. It’s sort of an interesting phenomenon that when they are all together, they can be overwhelmingly wicked and intolerable almost; the fighting is unrelenting, and the arguing is interminable, but yet when each is alone, I marvel at their sweetness and thoughtfulness and their ability to suddenly hear me even when I am not screaming!

I’m sure it will come as no surprise that the trick to managing kids and work is balance, and it becomes increasingly important as the number of kids increase. But the amazing thing about little kids is that they cherish time they spend with us, the activity that the time involves is of less significance, and learning this simple aspect of their psyche gives us a wonderful opportunity to achieve this “balance” that we all seek.

For me, this realization became crystal clear very early one morning; I really love early morning walks and this one particular morning as I quietly tried to get dressed to leave, my 3 year old son woke up and instead of trying to convince him that he needed to go back to sleep, I just took him along with me. Although I knew that he would like the walk, I really did it just so that I could go, not so much because I saw it as a chance to spend some time alone with him. I was almost astounded that I had such a great time with him on such a simple and impromptu “non-adventure”, you see, I took him to a coffee shop and while I had my coffee, he had a donut and my undivided attention! As I listened to him talk about school, his friends, the fun things that he did, the look of glee on his face just filled up my heart and it became obvious that I would need to do this again.

Now, I really try to work in alone time with each of my kids into both of our schedules, whether it’s a trip to the grocery store to get bread and milk, or shopping for that perfect handbag, or just an early morning walk. Once your kids are confident that you’re enjoying time with them as much as they are with you, I think you’ll find that this is the stuff that those “moments” are made of!