Kyra Jacobs | Let Them Grow

Parenting is tough. Understatement of the year, right?

First, it’s the baby years of all-hours-of-the-day feedings
and forever dodging spit up.

Next, it’s the toddler years, when you’re convinced they’re
going to trip and fall down any flight of stairs within a three-mile radius if you turn your head
for one second.

Then comes elementary school, where you’re trying to keep
your sanity while trying to coach your kids through “new” math (which makes absolutely no
sense whatsoever—why can’t five plus seven just be twelve without all these darned boxes
and rounding and uuuuuuuugh).

We’re now into the middle and high-school years at our
home, and trust me, those each come with their own (frequent) moments of chaos and
homework calamity. Add in two kids in sports that of course never meet at the same time or
place, and yeah, insanity can quickly become magnified tenfold. So why do we let them do it?

Because we love our kids (and we wouldn’t trade a moment
of any of it for the world.)

Band, choir, drama, sports—these are just a few of the
extracurricular activities that threaten to gobble up those precious few minutes between
work/school and bed. But they’re also fantastic opportunities to let our children stretch and
grow.

In my new book, THE SOCCER PLAYER AND THE SINGLE MOM, Felicity Shaw is a widowed mother of a six-year-old boy who looooooves all things sports. But because he’s not the most coordinated kid around, his protective mama has steered him toward consuming statistics instead of spending time on the field. It’s safe there, easy. But it doesn’t let him grow.

And I get it. Watching your little ones get hurt is awful. But I
also know they need room to play and be kids. To build teamwork and leadership skills. To
have the opportunity to get back up when life knocks them down. To be resilient. Determined.

To grow.

Now trust me, if my kids get slide-tackled or pushed from
behind on the soccer field, you’d better believe I’m hollering my displeasure from the sidelines
—mama bear is protective of her cubs LOL. But at the end of the day, I know through the good
plays and the bad, they’re learning skills that will help them both on and off the field. Because
things will come at you out of nowhere in life, and life isn’t always fair.

In SOCCER PLAYER, Felicity finally allows her son Tyler to practice with healing soccer star Scott Gillie in his grandmother’s backyard. And, as fate would have it, the poor kid kicks a shot that ricochets off the goal and beams him square in the face. Hey, it happens. And Felicity, in typical overprotective mama bear style, completely freaks out.

And Scott takes the brunt of her fear-induced rage.

But after the ER docs determine he’s going to be just fine,
and they resolve to get his glasses mended another day, it’s little Tyler who helps his mom
realize that she might have overreacted…and it’s time to go back and make amends.

I cannot tell you how many “from the mouths of babes”
moments I’ve had over the years. In this book, I finally got to work one in.

Love them, support them, let them grow.

Oh, and pray those pesky injuries are kept to a minimum. ;-)