Being the best!

I sat down to write this blog post because I overheard a father speaking to his child on the way home from a soccer game the other day.  He said, "Son, if you want to be the best, you have to practice really really hard."  

I turned to Morgan.  "Morgan," I said, thinking a bit about what I was about to say.  "There are a lot of people in the world.  And the probability of that child being the best are unlikely.  But you can always accomplish your best."  Then we talked about accepting that there might be someone better than us, but that we should always do our very best--in work, church responsibilities, home responsibilities, school, sports--whatever we do.

Every parent wants their child to be the best at something.  Or at least that's my perception.  I felt that way too.  I made sure my first child could read before kindergarten, practicing letters and forcing her to learn, even though she wasn't that interested.   It is true that she continues to be an avid reader 7 years later.

But the same goes for my next two kids.  They are avid readers too.  And neither of them could read before kindergarten.  In fact, they didn't even know their alphabets.

That doesn't mean my second two children weren't interested in reading.  In fact, my husband and I read captivating fiction and nonfiction picture books with them every night.  But we treated this as a special, fun time together.

When they got into kindergarten, all they knew was that they enjoyed reading and wanted to learn to do it.  They learned extremely quickly.

This kind of goes hand in hand with my previous post on reverse psychology . . . sometimes it seems the more I pushed a child, the slower she went.

My mother always said, "Do your best."

She also said, "You can do anything, but you can't do everything."  But she said that to my older sister.  I don't remember her teaching that to me before she died.  I could probably have used that quote.   . . . More on that later . . . maybe.