My husband is from a conservative mid-west family, and I from a west coast upbringing but neither of us could have dreamed up the adventure that was to stretch out before us as we became a young married couple and new parents. As it is with all families, we were blended from two different backgrounds and created our own special family, unique unto its own.
We met and married when my husband's military career had just begun, and thus started a 20+ year whirlwind of frequent moves around the country and around the world. We had 4 kids in 5 years, the first early years of our marriage. Much of that time we had no grandparents nearby to mentor us or "take the load off of us", no siblings to share trials with during dark hours of the night rocking a colicky baby. We only had each other. Our children are now between the ages of 17 and 22. Our nest is nearly empty, with our last leaving for college later this year. My husband served an honorable 26 years in the military and now works as an executive. A former preschool teacher, I now work from home in my art studio and volunteer in various civic capacities. We, like you, started off on a wing and a prayer that we would be good parents. We prayed, we read books, we asked friends, we asked our own parents, but in the end it was up to us to put into practice what we knew, and we didn't know much! That is the way it is with parenting...it is a hands on class in humility and patience, and when we look back we see the many mistakes we made as well as the many rewarding moments we've been blessed with. "I wish I knew then what I know now" is a familiar refrain! In each stage of parenting, we have seen and experienced some common parenting dilemmas which you may identify with in the pages of this blog. Check out the tabs at the top of this page and maybe you'll see you and your own child in our experiences, or in those of people we have observed, and perhaps help in your own journey. We are by no means "parenting experts". We have had and continue to face challenges as we learn to parent adult children (as they say, it is a journey, not a destination). We have seen many parents our age struggle through the teen years with their kids and beyond and ask us, "how did you do it?" That has been the catalyst for our story here, and hopefully some practical anecdotes to help other parents just like you.
