It isn’t easy being my kid. There is no doubt about it that I am so obsessed with getting our kids to think and act in a certain way that I walk the line of not letting them be kids. I’m the only one, right? Sometimes though, you get an unexpected glimpse that some of the stuff you repeat a million times is getting through.
Our son, Ethan, turned seven today.
Up, up and away
He is the older brother, and since I was too, receives far too much pressure and instruction from me on how to conduct himself. Since my passion is self-improvement, you can imagine the oh-so-exciting things that he has to choke down…
“Be aware of your attitude son. It will determine how your day goes.”
“Don’t spend all of your time obsessing about your video games. You need to expand yourself and find different things to be interested in.”
“Would you like for daddy to read a chapter from 7 Habits of Highly Effective People to you?”
Really exciting stuff for a first grader. However, shortly after our house burned last October, my wife and I began watching the DVD, The Secrect, and started understanding and applying the Law of Attraction. Before long, the kids were watching it with us and Ethan got it. I mean the kid really got it!
He would look at Tammy or I and confirm, in his own words, what he was hearing from the movie. “So if I focus on what I want… and feel like I already have it… the universe will help me get it?” I was so proud.
As we got busy rebuilding our house, the opportunities to watch the DVD were few and I thought the potential lessons learned had probably slipped away. About a week before Ethan’s birthday I went to tuck him in and saw that he was upset. He didn’t want me to know why at first, but Tammy got his permission to tell me that he was afraid he wouldn’t get a certain video game that he wanted, Lego Indiana Jones.
Like a machine, I started in on how being afraid was not the way to attract what you wanted and that he would need to shift his emotions if he… I know, and yes, I seriously talk this way to our kids. I told you it wasn’t easy to be them.
Anyway, before I can really get going he stops me to say that he has been using the Law of Attraction and was just having a rough moment right now. He tells me to go into the kitchen area of where we are staying and I find a replica Nintendo DS that he made out paper where he had drawn, what he imagined to be, the opening screen of Lego Indiana Jones. He had made it and been playing it to get himself in the mindset of already having it! I almost cried. Ok, I did. A little.
Now the power of the story isn’t that he got the game. After that, how were we not going to get it for him. And maybe, he attracted it through us and that would be pretty cool in itself. Tonight though, we found out that one of his buddies had also bought it for him! Coincidence?
Kids are amazing and they will give back in proportion to what we give them. I’ve got a lot of things to learn about being a parent, but little experiences like those remind me that my job is to give them the gift of my best self. They’ll figure out what they are going to take from my effort and how they turn out will be their gift back.
Be your best,
PJ
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