Lately I have begun to think about growing up. not myself mind you, that is a long way off, but my kids.

As a parent I want to savor every bit of cute childhood-ness that I see every day. But at the same time I’m supposed to be prepping the kids to grow up. Part of that is the urge to protect my kids from potential threats ,either physical or social. A dilemma that i have, is that I want to encourage their individuality. Each one is of them is this glorious, funny, smart person that could be anything. That is balanced with my worries about how the group can isolate away the unique. An example of this one of McKelvey’s christmas presents. She asked for a cloak, full length cloak. She asked for one because she doesn’t like big winter coats and loves olden times. Also as a lover of American Girl stories namely Felicity, she wanted a red cloak. Wanting to protect her from all the Little red riding hood jokes that would come her way we convinced her to approve a different color. I’ll find a pic of the cloak for you to see.

But she still gets a lot of comments, all positive, about the cloak. People look and stare, which is not something a kids usually wants, definitely my kids. So she has this great unique point of view and interests, but doesn’t want to stick out. How do you foster that and protect is at the same time?

So there is this tightrope between letting go and holding on, is that being a parent?

How many people out there want to be themselves but don’t want people to make a big deal about it?