Parents: let’s celebrate the small stuff

It is easy, as a parent, to become dazzled and then disappointed by grand plans, to feel guilty about our supposed lack of achievements or depressed about long days in which nothing much seemed to happen.  We live in a culture that celebrates the big, the grand, the fancy, the over the top, the larger than life.  Yet, parenting is built of many small acts, tiny acts that are repeated so often that they dissolve and disappear into our daily routine, becoming the background of our lives, no longer considered or celebrated.  Then, an old friend asks you what you’ve been doing lately and you struggle to think of anything, literally anything that you’ve achieved in the past month.  The irony is, it is the small stuff that really matters.  Loving, effective, kind parenting isn’t built from big, grand, fancy gestures.  Oh, no.  Loving, effective, kind parenting is built from many small loving, effective, kind acts, tiny things repeated over and over.  So, let’s celebrate the small stuff – the nappy changes, the full tummies, the bedtime stories, the shared laughter, the midnight cuddles…  I live a life of small stuff and that small stuff really matters.

Apply it to your life: What small parenting acts did you perform today?  How can you celebrate them?