Motivation means the reason one has for acting or behaving in a particular way. Motivation can be powerful--we all know that. Daring means audaciously bold. We don't all have that, but perhaps it can be taught and learned. Maybe or maybe not. However, I do believe that if you can find the right motivation you can overcome a lack of daring. Conversely, if you posses daring, you will require less motivation to grab the bull by its horns. My children teach me lessons everyday. My job is to learn what I am being taught so that I can help them achieve their full potential in life.
Since Cole Reynolds went to visit Dr. Cook, a homeopathic doctor who gave him a natural remedy to help with his sensory dysfunction, a couple of weeks ago, Cole has made tiny, but noticable, baby steps in the right direction. Perhaps it is one big coincidence, but perhaps the homeopathic remedy is helping. He is swing at the park--something he hasn't wanted to do since he was about 12 months old. He is also eating a little bit better. It is all relative, and while he is still not on the spectrum of what a typical child of his age will do, he is relatively better. With that perspective, we were at lunch today and it was a little late because of a conference call I had to take. Usually, we don't even try and feed Cole while we are at a restaurant because it is too stressful. It is too easy for him to leverage the fact that we are in public to refuse to eat. Today, we had to take his food. Before Gemma, Joel and I even got our food, he was mostly done with his puree--one that he is not that fond of. We had ordered some fruit for Cole--his favorite non-pureed food. He didn't eat all that much of it while the rest of us were eating our lunch. Then Joel cut up the fruit so Gemma could eat it after she had finished with her meal. We let both of the kids eat from the same plate of fruit. Gemma loves fruit. She eats it after every meal. She started to shove little fist-fulls of grapes and melon into her mouth. She was happy as a lark. This is where the motivation comes in. Cole, though not daring when it comes to eating, was suddenly motivated. He started shoving the honeydew in his mouth. He looked like a little chipmunk. When I realized what he was doing I started to laugh. This made him smile. Then he thought it was hilarious so he kept chewing and shoving and chewing and shoving. Gemma, meanwhile, kept eating the fruit oblivious to the fact that it had now become a race to see who would eat the fruit the fastest. Now, if we could just harness that motivation more often and with higher calorie food....
Gemma is my happy, fun-loving and daring baby. She also has her own mind and out of necessity is learning to fight for what she wants. Case in point. If she wanted the fruit that Cole Reynolds was trying to wrench out of her hand, she had to fight for it. Personally, I am happy to let her do so. If I step in at every turn, then she will miss out on a valuable lesson in life--sometimes you have to fight for what you want in life and you shouldn't sit back and expect somebody else to fight your fights for you. So, you may ask, what does this have to do with daring? Well, today at the park, Gemma's mind said she wanted to go down the slide--never mind that this was the playground designed for children 5 years of age and older. I was a bit apprehensive because there was no way for me to put her at the top of the slide and then get to the bottom in time to make sure she didn't fly off the end. Gemma was motivated and she put up a fight. She screamed, she "went boneless", she kicked until finally, Joel informed me that she didn't need help on the slide, I could just let go and she'd be fine getting down. Apparently, she had gone down this slide numerous times by herself earlier in the week. I let go, and down she went with peels of laughter along with my stomach. I guess my lesson here was that in this life, I'm going to have to let go and watch my baby slide away and pray that God catches her when I can't. It's not easy, but if I don't, there will be a lot of screaming and kicking and it's going to happen anyway so I might as well save us both some heartache and trust that God knows what I don't. Now, if only her daring nature will not overcome her common sense....
Today, on this day we celebrate mothers, I am thankful to be a mother and feel no need to celebrate me. I made the choice to be a mother and that doesn't seem like something Cole and Gemma need to thank me for. Instead, I feel profoundly grateful for the blessing that each of my children is to me. I am thankful to God that I am their mother.
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