When my daughter’s coach would announce a practice drill, for example suicide drills (you sports parents know what these are), the team would all shout with enthusiasm (however false), “We love suicides, yes yes YES!”
When she was in middle school, I was distressed at the lack of grammar education she was getting, so I bought workbooks and set out to “learn her some grammar” over the summer. As you can imagine, this was met with some resistance. Somehow through all the excuses, delays, whining, and even some tears, we persevered. At the end of the summer we had trudged through nouns and pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and prepositions. And some spelling as a bonus.
Before her school year got underway, she surprised me with a card. The printed part said, “Thanks! What you done were great! ...almost as goodly as my grammar! Heck, even more betterly!” How she found this perfect card, I don’t know. It was a Hallmark moment. But the best part was what she wrote – “Thanks for all your hard work. We love grammar! Yes yes YES!”
She took what had certainly not been the most fun part of her summer (or mine either) and made it a treasured mother/daughter memory, an acknowledgment that I was in her corner, paying attention, willing to make an effort on her behalf.
I give that coach a lot of credit. She taught the girls that to achieve takes some hard work, and we can choose our attitude. Celebrating the work energizes us and those around us, and keeps our eye on the goal.
Okay, I wrote this to get myself fired up for the day’s work.
I love cleaning house! Yes yes YES!
I love paying bills! Yes yes YES!
Here I go.
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