My son is graduating this week (we think). But that’s not the milestone that has my focus. It’s the milestone, for him, of follow-through. And to positively deal with stress. And to learn to communicate a clear thought and receive the same from someone else.
These milestones are really the ones that matter.
For example, he has had many assignments and experiences to get to this point. And completed them with help. But I needed to know he could champion one thing and see it through to completion. That thing was…his graduation announcement. Nothing crazy, high-risk, or seemingly vital. However, he did it, from start to finish: he drove himself to the photography shoot, chose the three final pictures, selected the announcement and ordered the number he thought best, then wrote the mailing addresses and even licked the envelopes (the latter with the help of family:)
A fairly nothing thing, but ironically, I saw him shift. He went from needing to be prodded in life items to texting me to find out if the announcements were ready. In this small experience, I gained hope and so did he. Because during this same time he’s had bigger, much more important items to complete. And that hope, and knowledge, would be needed as he has tried to apply the same principle to the many other things to be done for graduation (and an Eagle, and serve a church mission, etc.)
But he knows, if he can do this one annoying, inconvenient thing in the midst of craziness, he can do something else.
As mothers, sometimes our children get to major milestones and we want to hurry them through to know they’ve made it, or hurry them up to get it done so it’s finished. And yet, we can step back, let them lead, and look at what our children have truly learned, or become, in the smaller ways and celebrate that too (or cry at the deficit, whichever comes first).
Ironically, this past week my toddler “graduated” from preschool. Was that his major milestone? No, it was this: at the “graduation ceremony” he didn’t want to sing in front of all the parents in the big room with twenty other kids in hard seats. He was scared.
So we struck a compromise by me sitting near him at the front. As the other kids sang the songs and did the hand movements, my son and another little boy sat still, warily observing the group, and achieving a major milestone in their own way—they did something hard and that they didn’t want to do. Afterward, my husband and I congratulated him—on doing the difficult thing and succeeding. He walked out of the hall beaming.
Maybe this week, with many kids reaching the end of the school year, we can take a minute to list a few things we’ve accomplished.Whether it’s an autistic child learning to talk to another child, or a sleep-in kind of kid has learned to get up on time, we can share some of the “minor” milestones that have really mattered to each of us this year.
That’s definitely worthy of celebration.
Best,
Connie
