Happy belated holidays to you all. I hope you all enjoyed them. We did, but in a slightly different way than normal. Our experience this year gave me the idea for this week's article. It just isn't always perfect. In fact, whatever it is you're doing - it's never perfect. It simply is what it is. For some reason one of my biggest "perfection buttons" is raising children. It can so quickly and easily feel as though everything must be done to perfection, or there will be some imperceptible emotional or psychological scar on this beautiful blank slate with which you've been gifted.

In part, that's true. It's fairly easy to leave scars, and lasting ones. But the "blank slate" analogy is actually the perfect one, because those "mistakes" are so easily wiped away, cleaned up, and/or redone that we tend to forget it's okay to make "mistakes." When you're learning how to ride a bike, it's not about whether or not you ever fall down, it's whether or not you get back on the bike. Honestly, it's no different with parenting. It's not about whether or not you lose your cool, or even yell, it's about whether or not you take 5 minutes, take a deep breath, and apologize sincerely and with honesty. it's the erasing and rewriting that gets left - not the initial "mistake."

I carry a special "mistake bag" around with me for our third child. Slightly over three years ago I survived a car accident that should have killed me. I am left with scars, injuries, and chronic pain that is occasionally almost completely debilitating. MANY, many things do not get done to "perfection" around here any longer - if they get done at all.

This particular holiday being a perfect example. And simply because it applied to me on this occasion doesn't mean it didn't or couldn't have applied to others as well, or won't the next holiday or birthday down the road. There are ALWAYS opportunities to pick up the "I screwed it up" bag, whether we have injuries or too much work to do that week or whatever the reason. Parental guilt sometimes feels like it's the moisturizer you put on in the morning - it goes on first, and stays on all day!

This year for Easter, through a series of mishaps that most would call "lfe," but which I chose initially to call "I stink as a mother because I'm no longer a 100% human being, and therefore my child will be scarred" the baby didn't get an Easter Basket, or eggs, or anything. No Easter. Any one of us parents would likely have taken that opportunity to pick up the flogging stick and start wailing away. The set up was "perfect."

Allow me to make a suggestion for us all. Right next to that flogging stick, let's all put a "Look at it in a Different Light" stick. Let's all promise ourselves that before we pick up the flogging one, we'll first pick up the different light one. Because it's not the incident that defines the consequence, it's the lens through which it is seen.

Through some miracle I'll ever be able to explain, I found the different light stick before I found the flogging stick Easter morning, and quickly the Easter Bunny wrote my daughter a note explaining that he was going to just give Mommy and Daddy a little extra money this year to get her that extra special birthday prsent we didn't know if we would be able to get. That way, said the Easter Bunny, she would get her extra special present she'd been wanting for over a year, and some other children would be able to get baskets and candy and toys, because there would be more left over.

Sometimes, as parents, we also tend to forget that the sales pitch is at least as important as the item on sale, if not more so. The excitement with which that note was presented to her made it virtually impossible for her not to love the idea. So long as I live, I'll never forget it. She didn't give a hoot. She just liked the fantasy of the Easter Bunny, and appreciated the fact that she was helping him take care of all of the kids who really needed him.

So we spent Easter Sunday reading books, laughing, enjoying each other, and planning our special shopping trip for the special toy that she was getting for Birthday/Easter. I hope yours was as memorable as ours.

Not expensive, just priceless . . .

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