LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: THE THINGS YOUR KIDS CAN TEACH YOU

To the Editor:

Being a father has been a learning experience. It has taught me the true meaning of joy and gladness. It has showed me the reality of sorrow and sadness. Being a father has taught me much about my relationship with my heavenly father. Being a father is a learning experience, and your teacher is your kids.

They begin their teaching career the first day they are born. They teach you that you were once a baby, loved by parents, and you will never know how your parents felt until your kids come into the world and teach you that feeling of joy. Then they teach you how to hold the bottle right in their mouth, how to change their diapers on time, and how to keep them from crying, by picking them up on their demand. As they grow older, they increase your knowledge on managing time.

They teach you when to sleep and when not to sleep, how to prepare meals in the middle of the night and how to get your work done in a short amount of time, or not to worry about it at all. They teach you how to feed another person with a spoon, and how to have a great amount of patience in performing this chore. They teach you how to buy toys, clothes and give the best birthday party a kid can have. They teach you how to be a kid all over again, as you play with them, and they teach you their ways.

They teach you how to be in a thousand places at one time and how you could have been in ten times the activities you were in when you were a kid. They teach you to be a movie producer, a chauffeur and a business agent. They teach you to save so you can spend, and how to spend so you can save. They teach you to be a doctor and a nurse, how to clean the bathtub, how to pick up clothes, when you can find them. As they enter their teen years, they teach you to be a psychiatrist, or go see one, how to worry yourself to death, or have faith in God you never thought possible.

The most difficult lesson of all is, they teach you how to part, and share someone you have invested your entire life in. They teach you that all you have so proudly taught them, has been in vain, or so it seems for awhile. Then comes the stage in your life, where they teach you that all your effort was well spent. They actually become mature, responsible adults who want to learn how to be a parent like good old dad and mom, and they even boast they're going to do this job better than you did. And then they teach you the meaning of being humble, by admitting you did a better job of being a parent than they realized.

Yes, being a parent is a learning experience, because of the things your kids can teach you.

Ron Farrow

Cape Girardeau