Jon and Kate are Geniuses!

Last night I watched Jon and Kate plus 8. Usually watching that show helps me to feel as though my life is so calm compared to them. This episode however caused me to feel that I have things more jumbled up than they do. The episode was discussing parenting and discipline techniques. They talked about the various ways they punish the kids and how they need to fine tune their ways for each individual child. At the end Kate said that all you can do is love them and just try to let them know that you love them. And how true is that? I think that I often times get so wrapped up in the act of having kids and raising kids that I forget what the point is. I am overly micro-organizing and under macro-organizing as we would have concluded in the corporate world. I get so wrapped up in play dates and cooking organic foods, and making sure Calvin is visually stimulated enough, and making sure we read to Emma enough, and on and on and on, that I lose sight of the big picture…all of these things are done because I love my kids. And yes I know that I do these things because I love my kids. We have playdates so Emma won’t be socially challenged and will learn how to share; I feed the kids organic foods so they aren’t consuming high fructose corn syrup, red dye 40, and pesticides; I stimulate Calvin so he will be a genius; I read to Emma so she will have a love for books. I know that all of these things I do out of love, but how often do I stop taking myself so seriously and just love my kids?…not very often it seems. Jon and Kate have this so simplified and I need to take their lead it seems!