Feeding Our Children

A few weeks ago I spent some time at our oldest son and daughter-in-law's little farm.  It was a sacred time mostly playing with my almost two year-old granddaughter and enjoying the world at the farm.  Not to mention cuddling my newest granddaughter, born July 3, and visiting with my son and daughter-in-law.

Little Ruth and I spent a lot of time out on the roofed patio - Ruth playing in a pail of water and me watching her as well as some little house wrens who had a nest in an old coffee pot hanging there for just such a purpose.

I never did see any baby birds but I did see a couple of adult birds often bringing worms to the nest.  It amazed me how cautious they were.  They would come and sit on the fence quite a distance away.

Looking around to make sure they weren't seen, they would fly up to the rafters and again sit for a time.  Eventually they would fly into their nest with their feast - usually a big fat juicy worm!  Moments later they would re-emerge and off they would go again to find another such tasty morsel.

These are some pictures from last year when some sparrows had a nest in another can secured in the rafters.  However, the cat this year cleaned out the nest from that can (before the birds arrived I hope) but couldn't quite reach the old coffee pot dangling from the rafters.

All of this started me thinking about what we feed our children.  No, I'm not talking about meat and potatoes and veggies.  I'm talking about love and compassion, anger and frustration, honesty and truth and those sorts of things.

My kids have told me that the most important thing we fed them was the opportunity to be themselves - they didn't need to be little cookie-cutter miniatures, they were free to be themselves.  I remember several people commenting when our children were small how they were such free spirits.  I wasn't sure at the time quite how to take that but I guess it was a good thing.

Another thing that we fed our kids was the opportunity to make their own choices from a young age.  Packing for a camping holiday, for example, being the mother of three small children I let them each pack their own suitcase.  I looked through it, of course, to make sure they had enough of the major essentials but that was after they had packed what they thought they needed.  This continued through to our fourth child as well, letting them make small decisions on their own which turned into bigger choices as they grew older.

Later in life, as teenagers and then adults we could trust that they would make good choices but we were there to offer support and encouragement when they didn't turn out as well as expected.

We also gave them lots of opportunity to try new things - swimming, dancing, skating, Karate, ball, whatever, but not to the point that they had no time for themselves to play or just be.  We tried to find a happy balance.

As unsure as I felt at the time, I guess we didn't do too badly since they all turned out to be just awesome adults!  (Just a little bias there.)  All of this we did mostly by instinct, I guess.  We never actually decided this is what we wanted to teach our kids; I guess a lot of it was just because of who we are/were.  I know there were also times when we fed them anger and frustration and things like that but there was always an ample helping of love as well.

So I would be very interested to know what all of you are feeding your children, or grandchildren?  Is it lots of big juicy gobs of love, patience, honesty, respect, and kindness with just a small smattering of anger or frustration?  Or is it a lot of greed, impatience, and being miserable?  Have you ever thought about it?

This all then begs the question "What are we feeding ourselves?" to be able to feed others well.  But that's a whole other topic for another time!