For Everything There Is A Season - High School Graduation

My baby is graduating from high school, what a bitter sweet time this is.

I hope that her father and I have prepared her for the world that awaits. Children don't come with instructions so we can only do the best that we know how. We teach them right from wrong (some of us do), manners (again some do), how to be good citizens in the community and the world.

I have been parenting since I was 17 years old and I am very pleased with the young woman and amazing mother that my oldest daughter has grown in to. I know that I was not the best parent, especially the first 7 years of her life but she was always my first priority.

What I hope my daughter has learned:

• You have to volunteer in your community.
• Don't be quick to trust
• Be kind
• Recycle and care for the earth
• Take time for yourself, no matter how hectic you think that life is
• Go to the dentist every 6 months. ( We spent a fortune on braces)
• Don't drink and drive..... don't drink period
• Never become dependant on a man, learn a skill, the man may leave but knowledge stays with you forever
• Don't have babies until you have been to atleast 6 different states or overseas
• Smile a lot, laugh even more
• Enjoy your children when they are small, the dust bunnies and dirty dishes will always wait but the babies grow up
• Play in the rain, you will not catch a cold
• Adopt dogs from shelters not pet stores
• Learn to cook new dishes
• Don't take antibiotics unless you have a bacterial infection
• Listen to and follow your intuition
• You can always come home
• Mom will always listen
• Keep an open mind and be tolerant
• Vote
• Take a stand if you believe in something... even if you are just standing in line at McDonald's
• Have an opinion
• Never stop learning, be curious
• Work at what you love not just to earn a paycheck

Some of these may take sometime, especially the last, sometimes we have to work just for the paycheck in order to work at what we love doing and that's okay. As long as you have a passion.

I think that these are all tenets that we should all strive to live by.