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Running the Mile
Raising Kids with Different Personalities, Passions and Attitudes
By Charlene Torkelson
There is no guidebook for parenting, as they say. You have your first child and recognize immediately that this child sees the world in a different way than you do. After struggling to cope and just getting used to the personality of child No. 1, you have No. 2. No matter that this second child has the same parents and lives in the same house, child No. 2 will be entirely different. Then when you get used to the two of them, you have the third and again it starts – all new and all different.
I tell people that my three children are best described by their attitude toward running the mile. In our elementary school every student must run the mile in the spring. The kids look forward to that day in exactly the opposite way as they would Christmas except to count down to the dreaded day.
On mile day my oldest would come home with a big grin on his face and say, "Mom, guess what?"
I would wait and he would continue. "I'm not the slowest kid in my class anymore. I'm third slowest!"
And I would find myself congratulating him on such an accomplishment because he was so happy. I never stopped to think that third slowest isn't such a great accomplishment. He sees everything in the world in a positive glass-half-full way – even the worst scenario has an upbeat slant for him.
My daughter (child No. 2) would come home and say with no excitement in her voice at all, "I ran the mile today. I was the fastest girl in my class and the third fastest overall – and I even walked the last lap." She, on the other hand, is very athletic and competitive compared to my oldest. But she doesn't push to potential. Note she walked the last lap.