I recently read an article called How 936 Pennies Can Change the Way You Parent. I highly recommend all parents to take 10 minutes to read this. It really touched my heart as I am the mom to three great kids ages 21, 16 and 15. The article suggests we all fill a jar with 936 pennies at the birth of our child. Each penny represents a week of their life until they turn 18. Each Sunday you remove one penny as you have “spent” that week of the child’s life but as you remove the penny think about how that week developed. Did your child learn something new, did they grow as a person, did you grow as a parent or did you learn something new? As each penny is removed you realize how short your time is with your kids. Pretty soon they are grown and having children of their own.
I decided to make a jar for my two sons, as they are both under 18…Jack will only have 83 pennies in his jar as of today and Ben will have 154. That is not a lot of pennies. I panicked. What do they still need to know to become the men they will be?
I think of the practical things … how to do laundry and shop for groceries, how to balance a checkbook and maintain a car…but then there are the other lessons I want them to learn before they go off into the world to become men, husbands and fathers…how to be a good partner, how to prioritize and balance their lives so they are happy, how to take time to really engage with their surroundings…. these values seem as though they will take more than the weeks I have left with them as the parent of a child.
Let’s face it when Jack and Ben turn 18 I am no longer the mom to a boy, I am the mother of a man. Will I have enough time?
We need to value these 936 weeks we have to be a parent to each of our children and make sure we are giving them the best of ourselves; 936 weeks really isn’t that long when you think about it. And a special hug goes out to all of those parents I know who didn’t get to spend their 936 pennies, they will tell you the real value of the time they had with their child.
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.
Frederick Douglass
Taste of Home columnist Sandy (Anderson) Holthaus lives on a farm in South Haven, MN with her husband, Michael, and their children Zoe, Jack and Ben. Her heart remains on the North Shore where she grew up with her parents, Art and LaVonne Anderson of Schroeder. She enjoys writing about her childhood and mixes memories with delicious helpings of homestyle recipes.
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