I think my biggest misconception about parenting was that I thought I had a say in the blueprint in the lives of my children.  I remember holding my newborn in my arms, looking down at her and arrogantly thinking how lucky she was to have me as a mom.  I would love her until the day I departed this earth.  She would see me front and center at every single milestone of her life.  I would give her unconditional love, a warm and happy home, and I would teach her everything she needed to know.  I would listen to her dreams and aspirations and strive to get her to where she needed to be to fulfill those dreams. I really had it all planned out.  But the truth is, they come with a pre-package that no eraser to the blueprint can alter.  

It amazes me how you can have children from the same parents, the very same gene pool, and they can be so totally different.  My first born is the most outgoing personable human I have ever met.  She lights up a room when she walks into it.  My second born, a son,  is quiet and reserved.  He is deliberate and a deep thinker.  He understands life beyond his years.  And I would absolutely have the two of them no other way.  The gene pool gets all jumbled together and you get what you get. 

Of course, the factor I neglected to realize as a young mom is the outside influences I had no control over such as their acquaintances as they are growing up.  As they  became more independent my “perfect” blueprint had to be revised. You can give them what you consider the best base upbringing within your power, but then you  have to trust it because even if you do all the “right things”  the outside influences are out of your control.  Both types of influences,  what I consider bad and good,  are needed for kids to grow and learn.

You learn early on that you need to listen to what your kids are telling you. They tell us things in passing, when we are cooking dinner or driving them to school, when most of the time we are not even looking at them.   We hear them, but we aren’t listening.  My son was about 7 or 8 years old, and a flier came in the mail about a basketball team starting up.  I mentioned it to him and he said something like -- he didn’t like basketball.  We signed him up for it anyway, because of course he had to have a winter activity and we thought we knew what was best for him.   He got on the court with all the other happy kids, someone passed the ball to him and he let it bounce off his chest.  He stopped running down the court.  The coach pulled him out and told us he didn’t think our son liked basketball. Game over! Never again did he step on the court. Why? Why didn’t we listen to him?! He had told us already that he didn’t want to play basketball. He, in fact, hated basketball.  He wanted to play hockey, and, he became a forward and a top goal scorer.  We started listening.

Now that they are not at home anymore, I’ve had the time to reflect about our family life together.  It  has always been filled with laughter.  My husband just plain made our kids laugh.  I, of course, had to pretend that I was shocked at what he was saying to them and that made them laugh even harder.  I realize now that they taught us so much more than we ever taught them.  If we had been full-time listeners in this very busy world, we might have learned much more.

Another lesson of life: The blueprint is a dynamic piece of paper.

By Karen Capaccioli

Karen Capaccioli lives in Hanover with her husband (and two 20-something children on occasion). As Wink South's 'Voice of Reason', she shares the epiphanies that arise when we allow ourselves to look back.