Photo by Mieke Campbell on Unsplash

One of the essential pieces of parenting is joy.

One of the essential pieces of parenting that we often forget about is joy. Parents are at times overwhelmed with all the opinions, theories, research, and books that get hurled at us, and we forget about the joy of parenting. After all, what’s the point if we are not finding joy in interacting with and raising these future adults? 

I know there are hard times, times of chaos and messiness and stress. Sometimes, they are fast times, and sometimes they seem to last a long time. My children are now in their 20s, and I truly enjoy the adults they have become. My husband and I marvel at the fact that these are the same kids who sometimes drove us wild, and at the many doubts we had about them in the past. 

When we were raising our young kids, educators, therapists, and experts recommended a series of books with escalating titles: Raising Your Spirited Child, The Difficult Child, and finally The Explosive Child.