Kids don't need extraordinary. They need YOU.

The other day I stumbled upon this video in a motivational blog that I enjoy.  It's worth a watch.



Impressive, isn't it?

I left a comment on the blog to the effect of, "And I thought I was being awesome when I sat down with my kids and made bongos out of paper plates and styrofoam bowls yesterday morning."  Attaching a toy train to a weather balloon that's rigged with an HD camera and finding it miles away with an old cell phone's GPS is awesome.  It's also out of my league.

I thought nothing more about my comment until I noticed that someone had replied to it.  The reply was from a man named Bryan, someone whom I've never met.  He wrote, "If you ask your kids, you were."

Stopped in my tracks.

If you ask your kids, you were.

Bryan, whoever and wherever you are, thank you for this perfectly succinct dose of perspective.

You know, our kids don't scroll Pinterest or read blogs.  They're not ingesting Facebook status updates or keeping up with the activities that other mothers are doing with their children.  That's on us.  No generation before us has had this much exposure to how other mothers are mothering.  Our mothers saw when the neighbors down the street called in their children for dinner, of course, but us?  We're inundated with thousands of activities that we're not doing with our kids just by sitting down at the computer.

If you're like me, sometimes this can cause you to forget all that you are doing.

Our children don't need us to be extraordinary.  We're already pretty extraordinary to them.  What they need is us.

Now that's a thought worth sending to space.


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