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Alamb

Author/Television Reporter

Amanda Lamb is a professional television journalist and author. She covers murder trials by day and reads Dora the Explorer to her children at night. Somewhere in between all of that she writes about those parenting moments that catch each us off-guard in a crazy, chaotic, and wonderful way. Aman...

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Little Helping Hands

Amanda Lamb

I’m trying something new this year, and it is working beautifully.  I am enlisting my oldest daughter in helping me with holiday traditions that used to feel burdensome and tedious.

We were on a trip recently and my husband was driving.  I was addressing Christmas cards in the passenger seat, and the girls were bored in the backseat.  To pass the time I allowed my youngest to cut paper (I decided I’d deal with all the little bits on the floor later, the silence was worth the clean-up).  But my seven-year-old wanted a “job” to pay for the book I promised to buy her at the bookstore we were about to visit.  So, I gave her one.  She attached return address labels and stamps to sixty-two envelopes.  She was proud of her hard work and I was thankful for the help.

The next day we hauled all of the Christmas stuff down from the attic.  I was busy trying to figure out where to put all of the decorations my mom had shoved off on me over the years when my daughter asked if she and her friend could decorate the Christmas tree.  At first I  nixed the idea because I thought it would look awful (being the control freak that I am).  But then I said what the heck.  I put on Christmas music, gave them Santa hats to wear and told them to go for it.

“Okay, we need to move that red ball, too many red balls in that one area.  We need to spread them out,” I heard my daughter saying in the den as I unpacked boxes in the kitchen.  She ably directed her friend and her little sister.  The end result- perfection, I couldn’t have done a better job myself.

The moral to the story, kids can do more than we think they can.  It is up to us as parents to let them try.  More often then not they will surprise us.