If you don’t enjoy or relate to stories about children, you may not want to tune in for the next 16 days, 19 hours, and 17 minutes. I’m not counting or anything but that is how much time is left for Spring Break and many of my posts will likely be about my kids. Although come to think of it, if you don’t appreciate stories about children you may not want to tune in ever. It is my life.

“Mom, can you print me a NEW Hello Kitty?” My youngest daughter has such passion, no sentence is without emphasis. “NEW,” she says again with a pucker. 
“I got it. And yes, when I finish this.”
“Uhhh! I JUS,’ want, a Hello KITTY picture.”
“Sh.” I am watching Ramona and Beezus with the older kids while I eat breakfast. Hey, boundaries are boundaries and I happen to have them with my three year old. She can’t boss me.

We stretch when the credits scroll, procrastinating at getting our butts in gear for the day. I scoot them upstairs with motivational applause. “Come on, get dressed.”

As promised, I sign into the computer. The Hello Kitty picture is picked oh so carefully, thoughtfully, until all her wrongs are made right.  

“Mom, can I print one too?” my son asks.
“Yeah, go brush your teeth and slick that hair down from the two-inch Alfalfa cowlick you’re sporting first.”

He hops away while I take a face pad that intoxicates the entire bathroom with an antiseptic perfume to clean the night of sleep off my forehead. I straighten sheets and pillows, and stuff a thousandth load of darks in the washing machine.

“This isn’t working,” he says with a crack in his voice that tells me he’s frustrated.  
“What’s the problem?” I say squinting at the screen and clicking the links. Load. Reload. Hourglass timer. Reload again. Close the window. Open a new one. Google searched for Donkey Kong coloring pages.
“There ya go, Bud.”

I dole out to-do lists for the girls and grab stranded socks that have strayed from their partner. 
“How do I do this?” He is worried he will never get his beloved page.
“Right-click. Then paste it in Wor-“
“Okay, okay,” he tells me with annoyance. “I know.”
Oh. Well of course you do. The way your father knows his way around a grocery store. Hardly at all, save for the candy aisle.

My teeth have that after-coffee grime I’m always urgent to brush off, but when I pull the drawer out for toothpaste and mentally prepare the speech I’m about to give on chores, I hear him once more.

“Do I hit ‘OK’?”
Hm, that depends. I’ll require more information. Click ‘OK’ to close the window and erase the hard drive? Click ‘OK’ to join an Over 40 single’s chat room? Send a complaint to the White House (Leave that one to me. I have a few items to discuss.)? To print?

“Let me see here,” I say, bending down to assess the situation. Everything’s off. The copy is horizontal when it should be vertical. He’s widened it far beyond the bounds of the paper size. The selection is too light of a gray, and I simply want to tell him that the next time he thinks he can do things “by himself” could he please, just, not. It would be so much easier if I did it for him. 

Great advice, until I’m hit between the eyes with the force of a Mack truck. Because he’s exactly like his mom.

Don’t show me the instruction manual, keep any advice to yourself, I’ll figure it out as I go, thank you.

So how do I parent a child who is as independently spirited as myself? Let him fail, I think. Allow him to run full boar into his dreams, into what he thinks he knows. Watch him succeed and be there when he doesn’t so he’ll have a safe place to hurt. Then brainstorm about what went wrong, where the motives got skewed, come up with better options for the next time.

Try again. Always try, because you will anyway. You’ll think you know, and when you find out you didn’t, I’ll be right behind you ready to help map out the next route.

“Yep, you got it. Hit ‘OK’ and go see if it came out of the printer.”
He barrels down the stairs and is back in prompt fashion. “There were two since I clicked ‘print’ before you told me.”

Of course you did. And look how you figured it out.