Me and my uncle

My uncle Mike recently sent me this photo.  Tessa does look like me after all, huh?  Different eye color and my hair is curlier.  And take it from my mom, who spent hour after hour nurturing and negotiating my very opinionated self, Tessa is in fact my child.  The other day my mom had Tessa in the kitchen. I was nursing Teagan in the other room and overheard my mom and Tess.  Tess was on the brink of a meltdown because their was something"dirty"  and "rough" in her shoes.  This scenario was a daily occurrence when I was Tessa's age.  My mom, in a sing song voice said, "You remind me of someone I know....And I can't believe I doing this again....!!!!!" 

I keep reminding myself of a lecture I once  heard. The topic was parenting and the speaker asked the group of parents to think of the one thing that most challenged them as parents, the one quality in their children that made them crazy, made them furious.  She called on a few people, stubbornness, strong willed, argumentative, ect...  She then proceeded to say that if fostered and nurtured, these challenging qualities would be what the parents most appreciated in their children and they grew.  If fostered, the stubborn child would use this stuborness to be determined, to always find a way in the world even when the world says "no."  These very qualites are what makes individuals powerful, sucessful, independant, driven.  If parents can find  it in themselves to see this possibility, what a gift we can give our children.  This plays in my mind as I navigate my way through toddlerhood.  I am lucky enough to have had parents who fully embraced this approach.