Yaya Said It

It's the soft things in life that beckon us. A cushy sofa, mashed potatoes, white bread, fluffy socks. It's the yummy resting place that keeps crying out for the snooze button. The cold morning warrants a turn back into the toasty covers. The hot midday calls me back inside to the frosty air conditioning. All the extremes cry out for a countering relief. I lean towards what comforts me, not what makes me inconvenienced. None of this is good, in the long run, because it makes us soft ourselves, less useful, less mobile, less ready, in a world that needs us ready. 

I'm digressing here. What I am worried about, as us mature ladies are allowed to do, is all these babies growing up around us. I seem to recall, back when I was a child myself, old ladies saying similar things. So either we're getting worse all the time or it's something old ladies just say. But these chillun are getting soft. Too many of them look like they have never encountered mud pies or cat hair. With the last couple of insane years we've had, we all need to go roll around in the dirt, whether you're a kid or not. There's entirely too much hand sanitizer (there ain't nothing natural about that stuff), too much fear, too many news feeds (turn 'em off, they're getting paid to scare you), not enough spankings and hardly anybody telling their kids no. Dear heavens, tell your kids no. They need it. There will come a day when they walk out your door (hopefully, before they're ancient) and someone else will tell them no. They need to be ready for that, and it's better coming from you first. The most miserable kids I've ever seen were the ones whose Mamas tried to give them a sanitized, pampered childhood. It always seems to produce whining, ungrateful children, and takes away the pride and accomplishment of hard work, also stealing the joy that comes from simple play. Children need less toys, more time, more outdoors (lots more outdoors), they don't need those screens (I'm serious, they don't - that's hijacking their brains), and they need you to love them. The Good Book says that if we love our children, we won't contribute to their death by not disciplining them. Their death. It's that serious, that important. I have been young and now am old and I have seen it with my own eyes. Simplify that child's life, say no and mean it, say yes to the good things. Ask God for help. Get you and that baby to a God-fearing church. Time's a wastin' and babies don't keep.