Kid Friendly Home

FIVE MINUTE FRIDAY - PERSPECTIVE

Perspective - the state of one's ideas, the facts known to one, etc., in having a meaningful 

interrelationship.

My home is never quiet, never calm, never light and airy… it is always thick with laughter or yelling, with love or fighting and sometimes all these at once.

It’s complete with finger printed, crayon marked walls (that I promise I do scrub fairly often.) The huge sectional sofa we purchased less than four years ago looks very aged… I think the children mistakenly used it as a doodle tablet, many…. Many…. times.

Children come over and laugh and play and they feel comfortable, and they are at home here in my home. They are at peace here in my home. They are family here in my home.

Adults come over and I cringe when I seat them there on the drawing of my youngest. Or when they sit at the counter covered in crumbs and sticky mess waiting for their coffee.

I cringe when they look with disgust at the dust bunnies making home themselves there atop the picture frames on the walls… and on the ceiling fan.

I realized at some point, it’s all about perspective… when that perspective changes with age and time I don’t know.

When I finally opened my home and heart to women my age, who also had children, and invited them in for coffee and conversation (after so many apologies for my home being the way it is) one of them looked at me and said something I have never forgotten… she said “Your home is fine, your home is not sterile, your home is kid friendly”

My home is kid friendly…

Oh… I loved that then, I love it now… children do come, and they come often. Sometimes a little more often than I would like them to! I love that I can share and talk with them, and they can be themselves, and they can open up and grow here…

But how I do long for adult conversations at times, how I long to have an “adult friendly home” how I wish I could find like minded women who can come in and ignore the imperfections and kid friendliness of my home and sit, and have coffee, and conversations.

But perspective… I’m sure at some point in time when the children are gone and the furniture is replaced, the walls are repainted, and I have time for the dust… my home will be adult friendly… and I will long for the youth and the laughter, the yelling and the fighting, the joy and the innocence that comes with a kid friendly home.

STOP