Determination

    Tonight my baby cousin learned to crawl-forward.  Any one who has spent time around babies knows crawling forward is the start of true independence.  Some babies spend days, weeks, and even months trying to accomplish this.  They all start with the backwards scoot.  Like a car constantly stuck in reverse they can get to where they want to be it just takes a really long time!  The sheer will and determination it takes for a child to accomplish all it does in the first few years of life is absolutely amazing.  
     A baby will learn to eat, lift there head, sit up, crawl, and walk all in one year.  In the first five years they learn sight and sound recognition, speech, writing, multi tasking, art, architecture, and master the dramatic arts.  By the age of 3 they have mastered the art of sales.  Like a young teen in a used car lot a seemingly strong intelligent parent, aunt, uncle or grandparent will walk into a grocery store for milk and come out with 3 toys, cookies, and of course a much needed trinket from the quarter machines on the way out the door! The same person will have forgot the milk like the teen forgets to ask the price of the car merely because a 3 year old suggested how much the intelligent person would be loved if they bought that toy! 
   So it is true, like the book says, Everything I Need to Know I learned in Kindergarten. Where then does this knowledge, this will power, creativity, and determination go to?  How do these same children grow up to be adults who are so vastly different then the powerhouse that they started as.  Is our society so corrupt that it can literally suck the life right out of our children?  When does it start and when does it end?  These days I follow the postings of friends with young ones and sadly enough it begins in the first grade!  First grade, really, these kids are doubting and fearful and lost in the first year of school.  When asked why they all say the same thing.  \I have no friends, the teacher makes fun of me, I can't play sports.  I work with the parents of these young ones and guide them to friendships and confidence.  Sadly before we start they all say the same thing.  Why don't they teach you this stuff in books?  This stuff used to just be normal child rearing 101.  The latchkey society did not raise great parents.  Their hearts are in the right place they just lack the tools to parent because no one taught them!  
    I think it is time to write a parenting 101 book for everything they don't teach but should already know!