Life Lessons and Monkey Bars

Keira had quite the achievement this week. She crossed the monkey bars herself. It was amazing to watch her swing across grabbing the bars and moving so fast. The last couple were hard for her, since she was a bit tired, but I only helped her land her feet. She was so excited and I was so proud of her. This great accomplishment was allowed our family an opportunity to learn.

Cassidy has not crossed the monkey bars on her own. In fact, she seems to not want to hang from them for long. So she was quite upset that Keira did it when she's 3 and Cassidy hasn't when she's 5. We often try to tell our girls that everyone has something that they are good at and that they are special in their own ways. Yet, this did not seem to be helping Cassidy's ego. Seemed she saw it as a competition between herself and her sister. I knew that had to be stopped. Finally it dawned on me that when someone gives a compliment to another person does not mean they are saying something bad about you. After all, if I say Cassidy you had good manners, does that mean Keira had bad manners? Cassidy, thankfully, understood.

Then I realized that it is a life lesson that many people miss out on. Too often when we hear a compliment for someone we think that it means we aren't special or deserving of a compliment. Funny how something that is meant to be nice for one person we (okay, I'm talking about myself) turn it into a negative comment about ourselves. Hopefully we are all going to learn from that lesson in our house.