Loving and Letting Go - Softcover

Kuykendall, Carol

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0310235502 ISBN 13: 9780310235507

Publisher: Zondervan, 2000

Synopsis

Letting go is one of our most important responsibilities as a parent—and one of our most difficult challenges. Our loving gets in the way. We feel torn between the instinct to hold on and the responsibility to let go.Loving and Letting Go offers a unique combination of the author’s perspective from two critical points in the life of her family. Carol Kuykendall wrote the original descriptions when her children were young and she was just beginning to recognize the importance of letting go. Now she’s added the reflections of a mother looking back on those years with a greater understanding of this lifelong challenge. “The heart attitudes we form when our children are young often set the tone for the way we continue to live out this critical responsibility of parenting,” she claims. “That’s why letting go starts with preschoolers.”This easy-to-read, revised and expanded edition of Carol’s best-selling Learning to Let Go features new illustrations, time-tested tips, practical applications, and questions at the end of each chapter for personal reflection and/or discussion with a spouse or group. It also includes updated resources such as: General Guidelines to Letting Go 21 Practical Parenting Tips Consequences of Overprotecting Our Children Building a Firm Foundation Top Ten Ways to Love Your Child As Carol concludes, “In loving and letting go of our children, we learn greater truths that transcend parenting and help us live out our faith.” This book is a vital resource no matter where you are in the process of parenting.

About this title

About the Author

Carol Kuykendall is director of communications for MOPS, a freelance writer and speaker, and the author of several books, including Loving and Letting Go, and A Mother's Footprints of Faith. Her articles have been published in a number of magazines including Guideposts, Daily Guideposts, and Reader's Digest. She lives in Boulder, Colorado.

From the Back Cover

Letting go is one of our most important responsibilities as a parent and one of our most difficult challenges. Our loving gets in the way. We feel torn between the instinct to hold on and the responsibility to let go.

Loving and Letting Go offers a unique combination of the author s perspective from two critical points in the life of her family. Carol Kuykendall wrote the original descriptions when her children were young and she was just beginning to recognize the importance of letting go. Now she s added the reflections of a mother looking back on those years with a greater understanding of this lifelong challenge. "The heart attitudes we form when our children are young often set the tone for the way we continue to live out this critical responsibility of parenting," she claims. "That s why letting go starts with preschoolers."

This easy-to-read, revised and expanded edition of Carol s best-selling Learning to Let Go features new illustrations, time-tested tips, practical applications, and questions at the end of each chapter for personal reflection and/or discussion with a spouse or group. It also includes updated resources such as: General Guidelines to Letting Go 21 Practical Parenting Tips Consequences of Overprotecting Our Children Building a Firm Foundation Top Ten Ways to Love Your Child As Carol concludes, "In loving and letting go of our children, we learn greater truths that transcend parenting and help us live out our faith." This book is a vital resource no matter where you are in the process of parenting.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Loving and Letting Go Chapter One Stirring Up the Nest A neighbor said that our kids are like birds and when they learn to fly, we must let them go. So I did. But I have always left a little birdseed out and they fly back regularly. I am truly blessed. Beverly Cook, in A Mother s Touch `The early September day dawned cool and clear. As I sat sipping my coffee at our kitchen counter, I thought about the meaning of this milestone morning. It was the first day of kindergarten, and Kendall, our youngest, had finally reached the magic age of five, which gave her the right to stuff her backpack full of her new school supplies and march out the door, down the driveway, and onto the school bus to begin a whole new adventure. Suddenly she appeared in the kitchen, fully dressed and ready, a whole hour early. "Is it time yet, Mom?" she asked, plopping down her backpack and climbing up on a stool next to me, acting like some suddenly grown-up person. Obviously she was excited, while I was torn between a bittersweet twinge of joy and regret. I had thought I was looking forward to this day just as she was. After all, I had been home with little children for the last eleven years. In spite of periodic temptations to give up full-time mothering and seek the imagined fulfillment of a nine-to-five job, I chose to work part-time at home and arrange my days around peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, naptime schedules, and hectic preschool carpools. Symbolically this September day would mark the beginning of the freedom I d anticipated for years: freedom to pursue dreams I d postponed; freedom to develop neglected friendships; freedom to explore the possibilities of the next season of life. Instead of excitement, however, I felt sadness at the finality this moment represented. Even as I poured cereal into a bowl for Kendall, I realized this day also marked the end of a stage of mothering. When Kendall stepped on that bus this morning, she would be stepping into a new world of her own, and I was stepping back, to take on a permanent, more part-time status in the lives of my children. The planned obsolescence of mothering, I thought as I looked at my girl-baby perched on this kitchen stool, taking her treasures out of her backpack with her chubby preschool hands. I grabbed the camera and caught the moment. "Oh, Kendall, I don t want you to grow up and go off to school. How about if you stay home with me forever?" "Oh brother, Mom," she said, rolling her eyes. An hour later, I tried to swallow my nostalgia and share Kendall s joy as I walked her down the driveway, camera in hand again. As the big yellow bus lumbered to a stop at our gate, I hugged her and held her tightly ... and then let her go. Tears stung my eyes. I snapped a picture of her as the bus swallowed her up. I couldn t even find her in the windows full of laughing faces when the bus pulled away, marking the beginning of a time when the boundaries in her life would be out of my sight. I turned and walked down the long driveway to our house. Inside, I poured another cup of coffee. Why should this normal anticipated event cause me to feel sad? I asked myself and wandered aimlessly around a strangely quiet and empty house. After all, this independence is what I want for my child. I got out my Bible, sank down in a chair by the window, and blew a ripple over the surface of the steaming coffee. Gazing out the window, I noticed a beautiful large bird gracefully soaring over the field. Tawny with distinctive white markings, it had a powerful wide wingspan. Mommy Birds Mommy birds have the right idea, I decided. They feed and care for their baby birds, and then one day, when it s time, they merely nudge them out of the nest with no regrets, because that s the thing to do. They don t get all tangled up with concerns about the big scary world of predators out there. They don t get self-absorbed with sadness about living in an empty nest. They push the babies out of the nest, off they fly, and the mommies get on with life. Period. Done. Finished. Here I was, zooming ahead and imagining life in the empty nest, which sounded so dreadfully bleak--and empty. Just a few days before, a friend had stopped by after sending the last of her five children to college. "It s awful," she admitted, trying to laugh in spite of the quiver in her voice. "After twenty-six years of having kids around, suddenly the house is too big and lonely. We can t remember where the years went." I continued to watch the large bird in the bright blue sky. I was so captivated by its circling and soaring that I didn t even notice the smaller bird with identical markings, now darting in quick jerky movements around the larger bird. I soon realized this was a baby bird testing its wings while the larger bird circled and followed, swooping underneath and circling again. Following, leaving, returning, circling, and following again, the graceful larger bird tirelessly continued its watchful pattern. For these two birds, this moment was nothing more than a normal training session. For me it was a revelation about letting go. Birds may nudge their young out of the nest, but they are not done with their young after the nudging. The revelation reminded me of what I ve learned about eagles teaching their eaglets to fly. There s a passage in the Bible that describes this process: "... like an eagle that stirs up its nest and hovers over its young, that spreads its wings to catch them and carries them on its pinions" (Deut. 32:11).

Edition details

• Publisher: Zondervan
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0310235502
• ISBN 13: 9780310235507
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224