On the last day of the week, her “oh my gosh mom, stop calling him my boyfriend, you’re so embarrassing” and her best guy friend showed up to our house during their lunch hour with hamburgers from our favorite fast food joint. The three of them sat outside and had lunch together. They kept her company and gave her several reasons to smile after a long and isolated week.
I have no explanation for the scrunchies in their hair or why he has the order number on his head. I can tell you that they’re the sweetest boys just being silly to make my daughter smile and that’s what matters.
These kids proved me wrong over and over all week-long. It was a humbling experience to say the least. Maybe all this technology, snapchat, texting and selfies aren’t making them all crazy, self-centered bullies. It’s giving them access to each other in ways that we didn’t have growing up and maybe that’s not always a bad thing. I know that sometimes social media is abused and used in hateful ways but I’ve learned this week that sometimes it’s used in the sweetest, most generous ways.
When I was growing up and friend missed a week of school due to illness we really didn’t do much about it. We might have called them from our Swatch phone after dinner to see if they were okay and if we were really cool we added a friend to the conversation by using three-way calling. But other than that we kind of just let their parents handle it and waited for them to return to school.
The instant access these kids had to each other over the week gave them the ability to show compassion to my daughter in ways we couldn’t when we were their age. It gave them ways to love on her while she was home sick. It gave them the ability to show her that they cared and that she was not only loved but she was missed. I want to call each one of their parents and tell them thank you and well done.
We don’t give this generation enough credit. These are good kids doing their best to navigate through a world that has instant access to everything and every event the moment it happens. Their lives are being played out through social media in real-time right in front of all of our faces. Teenaging is hard stuff right now but they’re actually doing a pretty good job at making it work for them.
If you have little ones and are terrified of the teen years please let me tell you that the best is yet to come. These kids are the coolest and even through their struggle in trying to figure out who they are and where they fit in, they can be surprisingly awesome. It’s so amazing watching these kids grow into compassionate and generous young adults, even if we have to see most of it via snapchat. .
This is the most normal pic I could get them to take
Snapchat would have come in handy here. Next time they’ll let each other know what they’re wearing before he picks her up and they’re accidentally wearing matching outfits. I added this pic purely for my enjoyment and because it’s adorable.
This post originally appeared on Women With Worth.
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About the author: When Candice Curry was a little girl, she put her hand in her father’s back pocket so that she wouldn’t get lost in large crowds. Little did she know that as she followed him, he was plying his trade: conning people. Her family drove stolen cars, lived in stolen houses, and shopped with stolen credit cards. Drug use was regular, as were visits from strange people who were trying to track her father down. Though she eventually cut ties with her father, Candice could not ignore the scars that were left from her childhood. Read her story of a painful childhood that led to a life of redemption in Christ in her book, The Con Man’s Daughter.
