How Many Hours Does it Take to Raise a Good Kid?

Amy here. As we all know, motherhood is a marathon. A sometimes unrelenting, gratitude-lacking marathon.

You keep at it: “Sit up straight.” "Sit down." “Say ‘thank you.’” “Say ‘please.’” But since you don’t always get positive feedback, it’s hard to know if the kids are getting it. Can they hear me? Is it all sinking in?

My daughter recently caught me reading a particularly grisly newspaper article. She asked me why the person in the story would behave so badly. Can I tell you what my response was to my eight-year-old?

“Do you know how hard it is to make someone into a good person?! Do you know how many hours of work it takes a mom or a dad to turn someone into a good person?! A lot. Like, thousands and thousands of hours of hard work. And what if someone doesn’t have a mom or a dad who will do all that work? What if they don’t have someone who can teach them right from wrong? Then maybe it will be hard for that person to grow up into a good person.”

On a related note, I recently took a cottage vacation with my family. Anyone who knows me knows that nature isn’t exactly my thing. I’m a city girl through and through. Nonetheless, we headed up north en famille for a few days of nature and relaxation. At the cottage there was an old canoe.

I had not been in a canoe for 25 years. I don’t think I would have ever been in a canoe at all had it not been for my mother. Having always been an urban girl, my mother felt compelled to do something about my distinct lack of rural knowledge. At some point, she insisted that I attend overnight summer camp. There I took my first canoe trip, swam in a lake and learned how to make a fire with a single match in the rain. And wouldn’t you know? Some of that knowledge must have stuck.

I spied that beat up cottage canoe and had an idea. I looked at my husband and three kids and said, “Let’s go for a paddle.” After one of my kids cried, and my husband sort-of joked that I was risking their lives, all of them agreed to get in the boat. And do you know what? I’ve still got it. I sterned that canoe like a freakin’ captain. It all came back to me like I was 15 years old again. My kids had a blast. My husband looked at me in a new light.

And I learned that some of that good stuff that my mom worked so hard to provide me really did stick. I can only hope the same will be true for my girls.