“Never, never, never give up”
-Winston Churchill

My dad used to have this quote in his office. I think it was one of the mottos that he lived by. He always worked so hard at everything he did. I don’t think he ever quit anything that he really wanted. I think he did a great job of showing me how important it is to live by those words.

I thought about it today, when I was picking Emma up from school. Today was Emma’s dance class. I usually pick her up from school and we go right to dance class. Last week she told me that she didn’t want to go to dance. That was the first time I had ever heard her say anything negative about dance. Today, when I picked her up from school the first thing she said when she got in the car was that she didn’t want to go. We talked about it, and I tried to figure out if something had happened, and why she didn’t want to go. She said nothing had happened, and that she liked her teacher. She finally told me that the reason she didn’t want to go was because she wasn’t “good at it” and it was hard for her. We had a talk about it, but it really got me thinking.

This is one life lesson that I think is really important. I really want to instill in my kids that not everything in life is easy. I want them to learn that some things that are worth doing in life are HARD. I want to teach them that when things get hard, we can’t quit, and we need to work even harder. I guess that is a pretty hard lesson for a 6 year old, but I don’t think she is too young to start to get the idea.

I talked to her about how many of the things in my life are hard. I tried to tell her about an example that she could relate to. I told her about my mountain biking experience. I explained to her how hard it was when I started. I told her that it was really hard work and that I fell a lot. She said she remembered But, I told her that even though it was hard, and I got scared sometimes when I biked, I kept doing it. I got better and better, and it was so good for me.

We talked about it and I told her that we have to finish what we start. I told her that she chose to do dance this year, and that is isn’t OK to quit in the middle of the year. She decided that she would keep going until the end of the year. Next year she can decided whether or not she wants to sign up again.

Now that Emma is getting older, I am thinking less about discipline strategies, and more and more about these “life lessons”. In some ways I think the next phase is going to be even harder than raising babies and toddlers. But, I guess this is why I put in so much effort in these first years. I hope that the foundation that we have laid so far gives us a good foundation for the next important lessons.