Badges? We don’t need no stinkin’ badges! Yes. We. Do. Parental merit badges!
I remember being a girl scout. Yup, it’s hard to imagine now but I was once one of the cookie pushers. But even though it was great selling cookies, it was the merit badges that I really loved. I loved the act of completing a task and getting something to show that I had rocked it.
When you’re a girl scout you get badges for building fires, baking, charity work. But let’s be honest, that, like scouting, is kids stuff. We parents, we’re the ones that really need them. Think of all of the hurdles we have to go through before our kids are 18… or even five. So I’m proposing we have our own merit badges… parental merit badges. And now without further delay… the first series of proposed badges.
So there you have it, the first nine. Now you have to remember that these have been created by a woman who is the mother of two very small children.
I’m sure those of you with teenagers can add blogs upon blog posts of badges.
It’s a great concept, but one that we should all take on board even if we don’t actually wear our life experience on a piece of cloth. We wear it in wrinkles, gray hair, cups of coffee and yes, laughter. We are standing at the end of the day and that should make us as proud as that little girl who has no more room left on her sash.
