When my eldest started school, it was perfect timing. I had twin newborns who were crying out for my attention. They had enough competition between each other, and were probably relieved to realize that there was one less kid in the house.

When my twins started junior kindergarten, it was the same. I dropped them off with a newborn baby attached to my torso. Every day, I put that back-breaking baby carrier on and dropped her in and then promptly shuttled the twins to their front door. Likewise, we were always both waiting for them as they spilled back out again.

When I drop my daughter off on her first day of school, there will be just an audience of one. When I pick her up again, no longer an entourage. She doesn’t need one anyway. She’ll be going to a school she knows well from events and assemblies. Since it is a small school to begin with, her twin brothers will be just down the hall from her, whatever class she finds herself in.

But me? I’ll be coming home to an empty house. My days no longer compromised by anyone else’s needs. I imagine myself going for long morning runs, and shifting my work hours to daytime rather than the nighttime they’ve been occupying for years now, with me finally reaching my desk only after the kids are tucked away for the night. Heck, I might even be able to watch this thing people call TV before closing my eyes for the night.

I thought I would be more sad, but to be honest (and yes, thanks to COVID-19 and homeschooling), I am truly looking forward to it.

It hit me as I was walking through the aisles of Babies “R” Us the other day. (My daughter had strayed from the Toys “R” Us section on an allowance money spending spree with her brothers.) As we passed car seats and baby slings and bouncers, I inwardly wondered if I would do it all again. And for the first time I can remember, my heart, not just my head, said no.

My husband always says that if he were younger, he would have more kids. I would, too. But I’m not. I’m 43 and my heart is full of passion projects—books and podcasts and businesses and charities I dream of launching. I have four beautiful, healthy, smart, creative, adventurous and, yes, challenging kids who require my full attention.

My kids constantly require me to up-level my parenting skills. I have a husband I get to dote on again. Friends I’ve only just begun reconnecting with, and new friendships I get to explore.

It’s the beginning of a whole new era for me, and many more moms I imagine, as we drop off our last baby for their first day of elementary school.

Look out world, because here we come.

The post My Last First Day of Kindergarten appeared first on The Mabelhood.

“Are you sure?” I asked my hubby (more like pleaded).

“Sure. What else are we going to do with it?”

“But what about?” And here I cut off. Because we’re still in lockdown and there are no plane rides booked and, well, our youngest isn’t so young anymore.

“She’s almost five,” my husband said, and I winced. Because where did the time go?

We’ve had the double stroller since our twins were born. It’s carried our babies to parks and through airports. The twins would sleep it in it, shaded under the umbrella, whatever beach we were on. When we travelled, we actually strapped the babies to our bodies and used it to carry all our luggage and car seats. Through the years and visits to myriad theme parks, the kids would take turns riding in it, when they got tired. Later, I would even hang scooters and helmets off it. I actually preferred taking it on road trips because of all the things I could stuff into and around it; it was like a mini minivan.

And now it’s gone.

Yesterday, my eldest son, who’s 12, spent the day in the “city,” or as close to the city as we get in these here suburbs.

This morning, in health class, my 8-year-old twins learned about the dangers of smoking and vaping, even though I’ve never seen a Grade 3 kid do either.

Lately, my 4-year-old daughter tells me that the shows I pick out for her are “dumb” and “for babies.” As if she weren’t still my baby. As if she wouldn’t always be.

I remember lying in the sun in Jamaica, back when I was pregnant with my twins. Gord and Zach were frolicking in the shallow end of the pool, arguing over something silly, like whether Zach preferred McQueen or Mater. Or would he rather have chicken fingers or grilled cheese for lunch.

“It gets more complicated,” a white-haired man said, as he passed by. Gord and I laughed at it then, and many times over, through the years.

But right now it feels more like heartache.

By morning the stroller is gone. Perhaps another family expecting twins. Perhaps a young mom with a second child on the way. I think of all the days at the park to come for them. When nothing was more thrilling than a push on the swing.

I know I still have time. And I am so, so, so very grateful for it.

But I know it will look different. And every day the kids inch farther and farther away from me. They get a little bit sassier. A little more argumentative. They beffudle me even more.

I don’t know what else to say. To think of all those years past makes my heart hurt. Whoever has taken the stroller, whoever you are, I just wish you all the best. May you enjoy every moment and make mountains of memories.

The post The Stroller’s Last Day appeared first on The Mabelhood.

It has been a day, to say the least. It started innocently enough. I slept in, skipped my morning meditation and went straight into editing my book at 6am, because I had already lost an hour. I’m trying out intermittent fasting to lose some of the dreaded COVID 15, so I did my best to ignore my growling stomach while I wrote, actually looking forward to the glass of Metamucil I’ve been taking for two days now. Despite the packaging, it’s done nothing for my “plumbing,” but I like to tell myself I’ll feel fuller after I drink it and I do. Mind over matter. It’s enough anyway to tide me over until lunch, which starts at 11am these days, since that’s when the kids have their first of 300 nutrition breaks scheduled between their classes.

I shower at 7:50am because the kids are thankfully still asleep (impossible to get them to bed any earlier than 10pm since I no longer have “School tomorrow!” to threaten them with) and it’s the only chance I’ll get to have the bathroom to myself for the entire day.

By 8:15am everyone is at the kitchen table eating their waffles and Nutella. Because I’ve given up. I’m pretty sure the Gummy Bear vitamins are junk food in disguise, but anything to make me feel like a half decent mom.

At 9:10am, online class begins, but I’m always 5 minutes late because I keep forgetting to adjust the kids’ iPad screen time settings and then I have to do it all over again manually because the kids have already undone everything I did the day before. I’m running out of passwords for them to hack.

By 9:30am, my 4-year-old daughter has already had enough of online learning. She keeps running away from me and slamming her bedroom door shut so she can watch Disney and play Minecraft even though I’ve supposedly disabled both apps through screen time settings.

My 8-year-old twins watch their gym teacher do Gym class while lying down on the living room couch. 

I catch Scout in her playroom (the closet under the stairs) watching Disney. When I open the folding door, she quickly toggles over to her own Gym class. I see her teacher is juggling stuffed animals.

“Forget it; you can watch Disney,” I say, and close the door.

At 10:30am, the kitchen is finally clean from breakfast and now it’s time to start making lunch. I don’t even know what the kids like anymore so I make it all. Scambled eggs. Sunnyside up eggs. Cheesy rice. Frozen pizza. Bagels and cream cheese. And grilled cheese, just in case. Lest anyone think about calling child services on me, I do prepare a banana-blueberry-spinach-yogurt-and-oat milk smoothie that no one touches but me.

At 11:30am, the fighting begins. Followed by the whining and crying. Mostly mine. Okay, maybe the twins too. Grade 3 math is excruciating.

Scout is on to her second Makerspace craft activity which is really just like art class for octogenarians. I follow along as the YouTube video her teacher plays for us pauses for every inch of line drawn, until finally a squirrel/flower/caterpillar is revealed, hours after Scout has already defected for her Barbie dreamhouse. Because I don’t have enough to do.

At 12:30 the kids want lunch. Again.

By 1pm, the twins are fed up. I agree, so I let them vent in their daily journal. Zephyr talks about how “scool suks” and I write a note to his teacher about the beauty of catharsis.

If you haven’t heard about my eldest, tween-age son, it’s because we have an agreement. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Also: Stay out of my way, I’ll stay out of yours.

I promised the kids fresh-baked cookies for snack time (if there is such a thing anymore) but by 2pm I’m embroiled in a tech breakdown. In a Google Meet with the twins’ teacher, we put our heads together trying to figure out how to transfer screen shots of the twins’ daily journal to their Chromebook Google Slide. We both give up.

At 2:59pm, I reinstate Minecraft Education in the twins’ screen time settings, so I can be 4 minutes late for my client meeting.

I honestly can’t tell you what happened after that. I must have been sucked up by some worm hole of despair.

All I know is that when Gord comes home at 5:30pm, neither of us say a word. He pulls his pants off and puts an ice pack on his ailing knee while we silently compare whose day was harder. Then he hobbles over to the closet and pulls out the vacuum cleaner to clean up all the mud tramped through the hallway by one of the kids (“Not me!”). Point proven.

A text from a friend notifies me that Doug Ford wants to keep the kids home from school next September.

The end.

The post A Parent’s Diary: Day 489 of the Pandemic appeared first on The Mabelhood.

At first glance, for me anyway, it seems like a good idea. A way to get our voices heard. To advocate for our kids and their education.

I was so tempted I even emailed the letter to myself to fill out later.

After all, I want my kids back in the classroom as much as the next parent. I have a Junior Kindergartener who cries when I sit her in front of her virtual classroom. This is a kid that LOVES school, loves her teachers, loves her friends and is super social. But on the screen? She just can’t connect.

I have a child with learning disabilities. After missing out on support for much of last year and this year, due to virtual learning, we had finally had a meeting with his teacher and a social worker to create a plan of action to make strides with what’s left of this grade school year. Now that plan is just dust blowing in the wind.

I have another child who, if things continue this way for much longer, will miss out on sleepover camp in the summer and his Grade 8 graduation celebration next year. If the neighbourhood kids are any indication, he’ll have to watch re-runs of TV sitcoms to get a glimpse of what high school and college are really like, while my blood boils at the thought of the tuition money I’m spending for what can barely pass as University-level education. After all, how demanding can those professors be when our kids have been in and out of school for years?

It’s enough to make this mom throw up her hands and give up on it all. Which is what I’ve already threatened to do. Costa Rica is looking better by the minute, and like the T-shirt says, “Life is better at the beach.”

Except moving to Costa Rica was never my dream. Nor was home schooling.

If I could wave a magic wand I would make things exactly like they were over a year ago, before the pandemic hit and the first shutdowns took place. Sure things weren’t perfect, but at least we could count on the consistency of our schools and education and a somewhat less bleek future for our kids. There’s nothing like a school yard full of children playing and laughing with their friends, under the loving gaze of their teachers and administrators.

So leaders, if you’re listening, please return our kids to in-class learning. People have always had the opportunity to file the letter of intent to homeschool if that doesn’t work for them. But to deny the rest of us the alternative, when there are 0 cases at my kids’ schools and in my community, seems just plain unfair. Not to mention unreasonable, irresponsible, and impractical.

In fact, judging by the way the last year has gone, I’d say we need schools and quality education more than ever. Our future depends on it.

Cat lives in Ontario, Canada

The post Please Let Our Kids Go Back To School appeared first on The Mabelhood.

Too busy being a mom of four, running a business, volunteering, writing a book and launching another season of podcasts. Doing none of them very well, I might add.

Even writing this blog post, I’m interrupted by a steady stream of “Mama!”

“Mooommmmm!!!”

“Mommy!!!!”

“Mom!”

“Mama!”

There are scrambled eggs on the floor, cold waffles in the toaster and kids strewn all over the house. Every single one of them needs me at exactly the same time for something equally urgent. I am managing three different lunch breaks, three different classes, three different assignments, not to mention my phone ringing off the hook with my own students, doctors, clients and friends, emails streaming in faster than I can answer them, my own homework/client work piling up and deadlines zipping by.

To say this is unsustainable is an understatement. Even God takes a break and lets us scramble around for ourselves before stepping in to intervene with miracles.

I’ve been here before. I mean it; I’ve been exactly here, precisely before.

About three weeks into January, after another fretful week of homeschooling, I pulled my kids out of class.

“No more online classrooms! No more computers! No more screen time!” I shouted to no one in particular.

And for a time it worked. We went back to basics, and that meant hitting the outdoors first thing in the morning. I let the kids be kids, explore, play, whatever to their hearts content as long as it was outdoors and in the fresh-ish air.

Afternoons were spent working off hard copy only: paper printouts and pencils and erasers—not a screen in sight.

And it worked, for a time.

The days ended with fewer meltdowns (for both me and the kids). Everyone was calmer, happier and more satisfied. The kids had plenty of free time for puzzles, colouring, building and their pet lizard. And we still got to tackle some math sheets and journalling.

But as the days passed, I started running out of ideas. The kids were getting bored and lazy and missed their friends.

I also started hearing from the teachers first, followed by the principals. They acknowledged the concerns I had over screen time and the kids’ behaviours, and appreciated the efforts I was making to keep the kids on track. But still, the law is the law and…

So I decided to give online learning a second chance. Maybe it wasn’t so bad, after all? Maybe it was just me, or my cycle, or the moon, or the year of the ox.

But here we are again, the kids calling out for help, requiring me to be in front of four different computers at once, and me just gritting my teeth, praying we can just get. Through. Another. Day.

So yeah, the kids are going back to live classrooms on February 16. (Insert happy dance.)

And it couldn’t come sooner. For me, and for them.

The post I Couldn’t Be Happier About Kids Going Back To School appeared first on The Mabelhood.

The Holiday

Obvi! This one tops my list, and not just for Cameron Diaz’s wardrobe and the house envy: Kate Winslet’s charming little cottage or Cameron’s sprawling Hollywood pad? I’ll take both. This movie has a best friend feel that I love, even though the two protagonists don’t meet until the end. (Spoiler alert?) Jack Black and Jude Law are swoon-worthy as the love interests, and the two location settings make for great armchair travel. A pitch perfect holiday flick by the master of rom-coms, Nancy Meyers.

Love Actually

Get ready for the ultimate holiday love fest with this ensemble comedy. Hugh Grant is brilliant as always as the Prime Minister of England, and totally believable as he falls for his adorable new assistant. An awkward Colin Firth falling for his non-English speaking cleaning lady is also sweet to watch, as we cheer the two hapless lovers on. But it’s the Keira Knightley story line that steals the show, with her as the object of affection for a pre-Walking Dead Rick (yes!), played by a then-baby-faced Andrew Lincoln.

Bridget Jones’s Diary

Hugh Grant and Colin Firth also star in this hilarious flick, featuring Renée Zellweger as the Bridget Jones. Bookended by the holidays from start to finish, the film starts with Bridget walking in the snow on New Year’s Day, in her “32^nd year of being single.” She travels home for her family’s holiday party, where she reunites with an awkward childhood friend, Mark (Firth), ugly sweaters and all, and slowly falls in love with him. Trouble comes in the form of her charming boss (Grant), who strings her along. The real love story, though, is between the audience and Zellweger, for her honest, hilarious depiction of Bridget, a 30-something single woman searching for a “nice, sensible boyfriend to go out with.”

Four Christmases

This one features another stellar cast, and Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn are a match made in comedy heaven. A young couple in love visit their divorced parents over the holidays. The twist comes from the fact they are happily not married—or are they? As they go home for Christmas, visiting with their less-than-perfect families and past, they begin to wonder: How much do they really know and love each other? And should they get married? A ton of cameos, including Mary Steenburgen, Kristin Chenowith and Jon Favreau, round out the laughs.

When Harry Met Sally

Meg Ryan’s hair sure is looking dated these days, but still this classic stands the test of time. Exploring the Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus dynamics between men and women, Meg and Billy Crystal are friends who try (and fail) to not let sex get in the way of their friendship. Besides the will-they-won’t-they tension, there are so many great one-liners in this gem.

Meg: “I’m difficult. I’m too structured. I’m completely closed off.”

Billy: “But in a good way.”

Meg: “And I’m gonna be 40!”

Billy: “When?”

Meg, crying: “Some day!”

Just Friends

When it comes to one-liners, it’s hard to beat Ryan Reynolds’ quick delivery. His pre-Deadpool rom-com film Just Friends is packed with them. Featuring Amy Smart as Ryan’s high school crush, the story follows Ryan (“Chris”) as he returns home for Christmas, hot and successful, and tries to win back his former bestie who turned him down back in high school (“You’re like a brother”), turning him into a big-time womanizer. It’s a hilarious trip down memory lane we can all relate to.

A Bad Moms Christmas

Okay, so this isn’t a rom-com per se, but what kind of holiday flicks for moms round-up would this be if we didn’t include it? This holiday, the grandmas come home to show the moms how to do the holidays right. The moms won’t take their Christmas hijacking lying down, though, and there are plenty of hijinks, and cute guys (including This Is Us’ Justin Hartley as a dancing Santa), to keep us entertained along the way. As Kathryn Hahn says, “Let’s put the ass, back in Christmas.”

….

The post 10 Best Feel-Good Holiday Rom-Coms For Moms appeared first on The Mabelhood.

“I just don’t know if we should do Halloween this year,” a friend said to us one night, a few weeks ago, when the subject of trick-or-treating came up over a socially distanced visit.

It seemed preposterous to my husband and I at the time, and yet, it isn’t far from the truth. Since then, I’ve been polling every parent I run into: Trick-or-treat or stay at home? Survey results are mixed.

Some parents are talking about replacing trick or treating with treasure hunts and family movie nights. Some have mentioned using tongs to hand out treats, to maintain social distance. One parent even suggested throwing candy at the kids. Trick or treating as sport, I guess?

One mom mentioned candy chutes and slides parents can use to distribute the stuff. She’s right, it’s true! I saw it on YouTube!

Then there are the events that have popped up to replace local traditions. Instead of walks in the park where neighbours have put up their pumpkins, there are now pumpkin theme parks and Halloween light drive-throughs that can cost a small fortune if you have a car full of kids, like I do. That is if you can still get tickets, as most dates I looked up are sold out.

I got so desperate I even thought about renting a tent and heaters for an outdoor neighbourhood party, but then I remembered it would be hard to maintain social distance.

For Halloween babies, it’s especially tough. Halloween AND my birthday are cancelled this year? Ugh.

It’s enough to make this parent finally give in to the request to try paint ball, just to give my eldest SOMETHING to look forward to.

As for the handing out candy part, my husband has had his flu shot and as long as he’s feeling fine, he’ll be dressed up and dishing it out like any other year. Perhaps he’ll wear a fancy mask—that way he’ll have his costume and COVID protection all in one.

The truth is, I’m beginning to wonder if all these measures to protect us aren’t the beginning of our undoing. Businesses going under. Parents and kids feeling depressed and disconnected. If we’re still alive once the pandemic is finally over, I have to wonder what will be left of us if we keep going this way?

Chatting with other parents and neighbours, I hear that I’m not alone in these thoughts.

I’ve never been a traditionalist, despite the husband and four kids and a house in the suburbs. But I’m feeling very protective lately of our way of life. And that includes Halloween. Relinquishing this holiday feels like giving in to fear to me. A fear that is as nebulous as the ghosts and ghouls of Halloween.

Extra curricular sports like hockey are cancelled, but we can still take our kids to the mall if we want to. The kids wear masks at school and yet many of them are catching the common cold. To be honest, none of it is quite adding up.

For now, it looks like I’ll be planning an Easter Egg hunt in October. Like I said, the truth is stranger than fiction.

The post What’s a Parent To Do About Halloween This Year? appeared first on The Mabelhood.

What I pictured: My lipsticked self happily dropping off the kids at school. High-fiving the other moms at the playground while the kids frolicked in the grass. Then I’d go for a run, write a chapter, read a book with my coffee, and attend to some client work, before returning to school to pick the kids up, eager to see their smiling faces again.

The reality: A sea of masks at the school yard, where I could hardly recognize a friendly face. I stoically patted my kids on the back as they lined up according to socially distanced markers, telling them everything would be great. Then I promptly drove home and spent the rest of the day crying and grieving the first day of school we didn’t get.

How would my eldest son make friends at his new school when he couldn’t see people’s faces? How could my daughter, on her first day of Junior Kindergarten, feel safe and secure when she couldn’t even see her teacher’s smile? And thanks to the staggered re-entry, my twins too were missing the reunion with so many of their friends after months of social distancing.

I was crushed. And I said so, all over social media and in my various groups of friends and family on Whats App, text, Facebook and Instagram. I knew I wasn’t alone and we didn’t have to suffer in silence.

I received an outpour of support. Moms who sent me virtual hugs and agreed, “This totally sucks” and “Me too.”

Some non-parent friends had great advice. “Think of this as history in the making. Your kids are experiencing a first. They’re making history!” One friend shared.

“Masks show we love each other. It’s protecting ourselves and others. It’s an act of love,” another shared, reframing mask wearing for me.

At the same time, thanks to the staggered re-entry, the kids were still at home. Going to school one day while their friends went the next day. When would I finally get my me time?

I threw up my hands and chose to give myself grace. This is not the time to kill it at work, I decided. Me and my passion projects would just have to wait a little while longer.

And that goes for academics too, I decided, as I watched my distance learning parent friends go through their unique challenges. Kids have enough curve balls to deal with right now without having to stress over their lessons too.

So this year, I’m choosing to not get hung up on grades and what is learned this year in class. We are all—including teachers—just doing the best we can under the circumstances.

Maybe the real lessons this year don’t come from textbooks and software programs. Maybe the real lessons are staring right at us, crafted by a worldwide pandemic while protesters take to the streets and wildfires send people from their homes.

Maybe, this year, it’s Emotional Literacy we need to focus on.

Emotional intelligence (also known as EQ) is the ability to understand, use and manage your emotions in positive ways to communicate effectively, empathize with others and defuse conflict.

Emotional literacy refers to the ability to express one’s feelings. A person with well-developed emotional literacy is able to recognize and respond to the emotional states of others.

What if this is the year our kids master both, creating a whole new generation equipped with more EQ than any generation before it? What if this is the change the whole world has been waiting for, and it just took a pandemic for us to create the time and space to dedicate to it?

As far as subject matter goes, I can’t imagine a more useful skill set or knowledge base.

…

The post Maybe This Is The Kind Of Education Our Kids Need During COVID-19 appeared first on The Mabelhood.

When I was little, the big kids ruled the block. Babysitting. Paper routes. Girl Guide cookies.

My cousin and I even used to go door to door, selling mixed tapes—that had yet to be mixed.

Then I grew up, and joined the generation of parents that would helicopter around our kids. Knock on random doors? Speak to strangers? Not in my house!

And technology reared its ugly head, turning our attention inwards. To basement battles on Fortnite and online shopping.

Really, when was the last time a neighbourhood kid knocked on your door, offering their services?

Interestingly, while many of us parents are out of work—either through temporary layoffs during shutdown, or unable to open our bricks-and-mortar doors until restrictions are lifted—business is taking off for the young ’uns.

I have a Grade 7 tutoring my twins. She does so via Zoom calls three times a week and even knows how to use her whiteboard.

She’s so savvy she can tell when my twins are switching tabs on their browser to play Cool Math Games by the reflection on their glasses. There’s no fooling a middle grader.

Hockey practice is cancelled until further notice, so we’ve hired a Grade 9 AAA superstar to work out my eldest twice a week. The price is right and it keeps my son off the technology for a couple of hours each day he goes.

The high schooler is even tougher on my son than his hockey coach is, giving him extra burpees if he and his buddy complain. He doesn’t have a bench full of backseat-coaching parents watching his every move.  

Summer camps are cancelled but there’s word on the street that some savvy kids in the neighbourhood are teaming up to babysit small groups of kids, promising to do camp-style activities with them.

You can bet I’ll be looking them up once the first chorus of “I’m bored” hits.

I haven’t heard of so many child-run businesses since my Babysitters Club book series days.

Considering that up until the pandemic, one of my greatest worries was what our kids were going to do for a living when they grow up, I’m taking this entrepreneurial tack as good news.

According to some reports, up to 800 million global workers will lose their jobs to robotic automation by 2030. It’s said that one-third of the workforce may need to retrain for other jobs.

While I’d love for my kids to be in class and community programming, I can think of no better preparation for the real world than growing an instinct for supply and demand, and nurturing the creativity that it takes to go with the flow.

Maybe this is exactly the kind of education our kids need today.

The post Open For Business: Teens Are Leading the Way appeared first on The Mabelhood.

My twins hate learning to play piano.

It kills me to do so, but I’m on the verge of letting them off the hook.

I dunno, I guess my dad forced me into music lessons when I was young, and I felt like I would be letting my kids down if I didn’t enroll them too. What if they turned 20 and realized they wanted to be rock stars? What about all the other benefits they gain from learning music (fine motor skills, increased memory, abstract thinking)?

And yet, I also remember not at all enjoying my music lessons. I wanted to learn the blues on piano, but instead they were teaching me to waltz. And before that, my parents would shut me away in my dad’s drafting room with an accordion that was bigger than I was and that would pinch the skin on my chest and I would just cry the whole hour. (What were they thinking?!)

My eldest is a good little soldier and has stuck with his music lessons, though he quickly switched to drums after a few years of piano and would rather be playing football.

Despite the fact that we’ve all been kids at one point, being cajoled into activities and extracurriculars by our parents, it seems many of us turn into our parents one day, and force our own kids into activities and extracurriculars they really don’t care about.

My neighbours have tried everything with their son, and still haven’t found something that sticks. (He’d rather be playing video games, but then again, what kid wouldn’t?)

We sink hundreds and thousands of dollars into sports, only for the kids to decide they’d rather hang out with their friends when they reach high school. Or switch to a different sport altogether.

I imagine it’s the same feeling I’ll have one day as I help my kid with their college or university tuition when they choose to change their major, or get a second degree, on a whim.

Mostly, though, I just want my kids to find something they love to do. And I’m so desperate to help them find it, I’ll try anything. Like enrolling them in every summer camp under the sun.

I’m not sure why I’m so obsessed with trying to help my kids spot their purpose, their passion, their life’s calling.

Maybe it’s so they won’t turn out like me and find themselves at 40, still be trying to figure out what they want to be when they grow up.

But maybe that’s just the journey we all have to take, and there’s no sparing them. Maybe some of my kids will know what their calling is, like Zane, who just has a natural, God-given talent for creating crazy-cool at-home movies and comics. (He’s got story boarding nailed!)

Maybe they’ll turn out like their dad, and aimlessly follow the Grateful Dead until the lead singer dies and it’s time to get a real job. (Kidding—not kidding.)

Maybe they’ll turn out like their mom and run from what they love their whole life because they don’t think they’re worthy, until one day they realize that they are.

I guess that’s why I’m ready to let go of the piano lessons for the twins. Maybe they know what they like better than I do. And they’re already on their way.

…

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