Visit With Peter 

I am looking forward to a visit with my youngest grandchild.  Peter Holland Scholz is 27 months old.  He is bright, happy, smart, curious, active, determined, busy, friendly, and just the best little guy ever!  Spoken like a true grandmother?  You bet.

Peter’s parents are flying to Chicago for a wedding.  I’m so glad they asked me to stay with their son.  I anticipate that he will enjoy getting to sleep a little later in the mornings, though not much later.  He will certainly test a few limits as he realizes that Meema doesn’t know all the house rules.

This little fellow will likely not eat as well as when his parents are in the home.  Not because I purposely feed him more or less, or not what they perhaps would, but because I won’t know his habits, needs, and signals like they do.  Maybe this is a very good thing.  It occurs to me that it’s important that even very young children learn to adapt to the world around them.

Peter goes to daycare and they provide him with lunch.  Should he not like what they serve, he either goes without or learns to eat what is served.  In my daycare, I asked parents to provide lunch as I was not willing to allow a young one to be hungry should he not like what I served, and I certainly didn’t want to offer snacks to suffice.  Peter is learning that different people in different places behave differently from his parents.  This is an important life lesson.

I’m taking with me activities to share with Peter.  He will come to expect this over time as my two granddaughters do.  If I didn’t take anything with me, Peter would stay busy.  He knows that Meema will follow him wherever and whenever he goes.  He knows that Meema will allow him to climb, unlike his daddy who is the helicopter parent in the family.  Peter pats the floor beside him and says, “Ah-mon (come on), Meema.”

My hope during each visit to South Carolina (once every couple of months), is that Peter learns that I love him unconditionally.  Without limit!  Forever!  As he gets older, there will come more times that I must enforce a rule.  (The only limit I have had to set for him thus far is not to throw objects toward me.  When he did, I would take it and place it out of his reach.  He then would throw in my direction, pick the object up and point it toward the mantel where I was placing the things he threw.  I said he is smart.)  If he has learned along the way that my love for him will never change, he will understand that not liking or accepting a behavior has nothing to do with my love for him or his parents.

I hope you are enjoying each phase and stage of development as your wee one goes through it.  They do pass, and the child has many lessons to learn along the way.  The most important is that parents and other close family members love them unconditionally. Just as our Heavenly Father loves us.   Happy parenting…and grandparenting!

© 2014 Brenda Holland-Robinson