This week the girls and I watched the movie Ramona and Beezus. I had read all of the Ramona books as a young girl, and my oldest daughter read through them all last year. So when we saw that they were coming out with a movie we were beyond excited. Add that to the fact that Selena Gomez starred in it and my girls were sure it was going to be awesome.
It really was a fantastic movie, very funny and family friendly.
**********Warning --- if you've not seen it yet and don't want to hear anything about it this is your spoiler warning!!!!************************************
OK moving on ... although the girls in the movie are MUCH different ages than my girls I could see so many similarities in them. For those of you who don't know, I'm a big believer in the whole birth order thing. As in, many children fall under certain personality traits and tendencies based on their birth order. I'm not saying this is 100% true all the time, but many times it is.
In my girls I see my firstborn with very confident, perfectionist personality traits. My youngest is definitely my 'free spirit'. Neither is right or wrong or better or worse than the other. I simply adore BOTH of my girls for who they are. But I'm just saying that there is an obvious difference in their tendencies. And it seems like whenever I talk with other Moms about it, many of their kids are very similar based on their birth order.
So, back to the movie. Beezus is the older sister who seems to float through life without any troubles or problems. Ramona on the other hand - well, trouble and accidents seem to follow her wherever she goes. She falls through the ceiling while they're having an open house to sell their home, she accidentally sets the stove on fire, she accidentally paints the neighbors entire truck in rainbow colors, etc.
And Beezus lets her know each and every time just how silly, stupid, dumb, annoying she thinks her little sister is.
It made me cry! It reminded me of my girls! Now I'm not saying that my oldest is ALWAYS mean and cruel to her sister. But there are certainly times when she treats her sister JUST like Beezus did! She acts like her little sister is dumb, or can't do anything right. I think that as a parent it's easier to see the difference in birth order tendencies and ACCEPT them -- but for a kid, especially a sibling, those tendencies just seem annoying.
The really sad thing was that Ramona began to believe that she couldn't do anything right. She began to believe that she was useless and dumb and just caused trouble to everyone. I wondered if my youngest ever felt that way?
It also caused me to take a good look at my parenting. There are times when my youngest frustrates me. She gets so easily distracted many times and doesn't do what I said and then I get annoyed and yell. Or when she spills something because she was being silly and I get upset with her. The movie helped me see that every negative reaction I am giving my daughter, she could be interpreting as thinking 'Mama thinks I'm not good enough.' or 'Mama thinks I can't do things as well as Hope can.' Or every time I trust Hope to do a big job for me, and don't trust Joy, because I'm afraid she can't handle it - she might think that she's not good enough.
Ramona and Beezus helped me see that I need to treat both of my girls with all the love and trust and respect I can give - no matter what their personalities are, no matter if they do spill the milk on the way to the table! It also reminded me that I need to continually teach {and model} kindness and acceptance to my girls.
It was such a great movie and I'm so thankful for the lessons it taught me. Today I'm thanking the Lord for giving me two bright, beautiful, healthy, vibrant girls - no matter what their personalities are, I sure love 'em!
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