When we decide to embark on the joys and challenges of parenthood, many of us have no idea what we are getting ourselves into! We imagine rocking our beautiful, cherubic baby or taking them off to their first day of school, we may even prepare ourselves for changing diapers and getting to doctors’ appointments if we are realists. There are dozens of tasks and challenges, however that we may not even fathom. It does not take long for a parent to start to wonder “How in the world am I going to teach them THAT?”
In my parenting journey, there have been some surprising lessons that I had no idea how to teach: how do you teach a child how to whistle? Spit? Climb a tree? There are those life skills that just seem to be better learned on one’s own and can be a puzzle for a parent to actually teach. It is those every day life skills that often get overlooked too. At some point, we have to figure out how to teach our children to tie their own shoes, work a belt buckle, spit out toothpaste, wash their own hair, and clip their own toenails and it can leave us at a loss for just how to begin passing on the lessons.
As a matter of fact, some of us might overlook these tasks and lessons and it is not until we notice that our child has learned how to whistle or spit that we realize it was even an issue! I cannot count the times that my children figured out how to do things like blow bubbles with their bubble gum and I found myself asking how they learned it. All the while I was a bit relieved that I didn’t have to be the one to teach it to them!