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Home › Articles › Essays and Humor › Weeds and Blooms

Weeds and Blooms

The Similarities Between
Gardening and Parenting

By Amy Dingmann

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Getting Down and Dirty
One of the joys of gardening is getting dirty. You could pay someone else to plant and tend your garden, but what would be the personal reward? Parenting is similar in that it is sometimes tempting to sit on the sidelines, passively watching our children grow up, letting someone else take the active role. But if you miss out on the work, you often miss out on the satisfaction and reward.

"Kids whose parents are very involved in their kids' lives are so much more successful," Johnson says. "Even as 9-year-olds in my classroom, it's easy to see who is getting that extra support and help at home. Kids know their parents care by simple things. It's as easy as coming to conferences, asking about their day and specific projects, coming to school to eat lunch with them or surprising them with a note in their backpack to say you love them."

Controlling Your Garden
There is only so much you can control about your garden. Certainly not the sunlight or amount of natural rain. Does this sound like parenting? It's sometimes stressful to think of all the things we can't control about our children's lives. So how is a parent to cope?

"My mother told me years ago that raising children is like training a dog," Wilhelm says. "You train them and give them a little leash. If they do well, you praise them and give them a little more leash. If they don't do well, you bring them back and train them some more. Repeat over and over again until adulthod! If you are consistent in your training you have to trust it to some extent. Mistakes will be made. That's part of growing up. But use the mistakes to teach more."


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