By Elisa Preston 
You know that kid you see in the grocery store who just walks nicely alongside their parent’s cart? Yeah, that’s not my kid. Mine is either hopping or dancing or jumping her way through, most of the time.
You know that kid you see in public who says “okay” when Mom says no? Yeah, that’s not my kid. She says, “But, Mom, I have an idea!” Because she always has an idea. Always.
You know that kid you see walking nicely in the parking lot, not jaunting or skipping or walking over cracks? Like, literally, they’re just . . . walking to the car? Yeah, that’s not my kid, either.
It’s one of the easiest things in our social media era to compare our kids and our parenting. Memes and smiles abound on our screens, and we wonder What am I doing wrong?
Well, here’s what I know. One of my closest friends is one of the smartest people I know. She is generous in her time, talents, and treasures. She is hilarious. She does good, hard work that benefits whole communities at a time. She has volunteered on the Red Cross First Response team. She is the best listener and can talk for hours. She judges none and assigns dignity to every human she meets.
And . . . as a child, she once slept on the mat in front of the kitchen sink because her mom told her to do the dishes, and she didn’t believe it was her night to do them, so she didn’t do them. But her mom said, “Don’t move off that mat until you’ve done the dishes.” So she slept there.
Hey, I have one of those! The one who always has a “better” idea, who pushes back for the tiniest things, who is unintimidated by my raised voice.
And also . . . the one who makes sure the students in the autism class feel included in P.E. The one who wrote a letter to the town supervisor to get swear words off the playground because her best friend’s 5-year-old brother likes to play there, and she didn’t think that was appropriate. (The supervisor called back and went to work on it, by the way).
The one who “won’t quit until she succeeds,” per her very own words. The one who climbed up and down a total of 396 stairs on a mountain in Hawaii, just to say she did it. The one who won the first character award of the year because her teacher sees the balance of leadership and kindness in her actions on a daily basis.
The one who cheers—loudly—for her team (the Yankees) in a stadium filled with Blue Jays fans. The one who says “hard pass!” when her friend asks her to sneak screen time. And the one who insists she has to wear her helmet because her mama said so even though her friend doesn’t have to.
So, my kid might not always be the yes kid. But since I know it’s not always the yes kids who get the right things done, I’m pretty okay with that. I’ll keep teaching her to fight the right battles. I’ll keep enforcing the limits even though she tests them.
And I’ll keep that relationship strong so when she pushes the wrong limits, she knows I’m still her lighthouse—the safe place she can return to when life is hard. And I’ll keep that relationship strong so when she pushes the right limits—when she says no at the right times and changes the world just a little bit—she knows that the cheerleader I’ll be in that moment is the one I’ve been all along.
by Jessica Johnston 
by Jessica Abshire 
