I love this recent post by our neighbor. I need to think about what the priorities are for me & am copying it here so I remember.
“Parenting can be rather like that. You head out with an idea of where you want to end up, but with no detailed map, no well-marked trail. You figure out the details as you come across them. The essentials are good observational skills, common sense, resourcefulness, the ability to stay calm when you find yourself in a bad situation, and a willingness to either re-route or muddle through when the landscape becomes difficult.
Where I think people get lost — and I could be wrong but I’ve seen it happen a lot — is in failing to define clearly enough where they want to end up. Saying you want a happy kid is like saying you want to head east. It’s too vague. If you say you want your child to be thoughtful of others, have good coping skills, know the difference between joy and pleasure, be strong enough to withstand a goodly amount of peer pressure, and have a rich spiritual life, your odds of having him arrive at 3pm at the large pine tree next to the stream in the cleft between those two hills five miles to the southeast are much better.”
