Milestones & Hurdles

There were two things that started this train of thought for me, a phone call from my sweet Sister In Law about potty training, & a great blog post, that I found at random, about how you could solve your child's homework issues. It got me thinking about all the milestones of raising children & how at the time they seem so frustrating, so frustrating that it consumes your day to day life in stress & worry.
Then you figure out how to solve it, whatever "IT" may be, & it becomes a distant memory. It may be weaning, potty training, math homework, I'm sure there are more but mine aren't there yet. And with each of your children the "problems" are never quite the same, and generally don't have the same solution. What worked for one may or may not work for another one, they are their own individuals.
Our latest & greatest was last year, getting my then 3rd grade son to DO his homework. The child is EXTREMELY bright, & once he had figured out how do to something doing it over & over & over again was not his thing. He would bring home piles of papers he wasn't getting finished, things he COULD finish in minutes. But did he???? Noooooooo, we would spend a couple of hours a night at the kitchen table, me being VERY frustrated & begging him to just finish them, him being VERY frustrated & digging his heals in. What I finally came to realize was this, once he had figured it out, and it was no longer a challenge for him, he had a hard time consentrating on it if there were other things going on.
So we put a desk in his room where it was quiet, gave him a small timer set with 10-30 minutes depending on how much work he had, then left him alone. It worked like a charm, & all was calm once again. I am very proud to say that this year in 4th grade he is doing great! Very rarely does he have to bring unfinished papers home & when he does he is able to finish it, at the kitchen table, in less than 15 minutes.
So I guess it goes to show that while we are learning how to deal with our childrens growing up milestones they, at the same time, are learning how to deal with life. And what we think of as a HUGE problem at the time soon becomes just a distant, & because we have conquered it, happy memory. And Life goes on one step at a time.