7 Lessons I Learned About Life, Love, and Parenting After We Adopted Our Son from Ethiopia
In this heartwarming and hilarious memoir More Love, Less Panic, Claude Knobler describes how he learned the hard way that the apple actually can fall far from the tree—and that’s Okay.
Already the biological parents of a seven-year-old son and a five-year-old daughter, Claude Knobler and his wife decided to adopt Nati, a five-year-old Ethiopian boy who seemed different from Knobler in every conceivable way. After more than five years spent trying to turn his wild, silly, adopted African son into a quiet, neurotic, Jewish guy like himself, Knobler realized the importance of having the courage to love, accept, and let go of his children.
In this wonderfully written memoir More Love, Less Panic, Knobler explains how his experiences raising Nati led him to learn a lesson that applied equally well to parenting his biological children: It’s essential to spend the time we are given with our children to love them and enjoy them, rather than push and mold them into who we think they should be.
This New Year’s, I Resolve to Accept My Kids for Who They Are
I’ve realized that we simply cannot turn our rambunctious adopted Ethiopian boy into a quiet, neurotic Jew, no matter how hard we try
More times than I care to count, I have been seduced into buying pocket size notebooks, leather bound journals and, God help me, the occasional fountain pen. I buy these things because of the reoccurring fantasy that I will finally make myself into the sort of person who writes profound insights onto perfect, clean sheets of paper, in beautiful script, alongside elegantly drawn sketches illustrating the details of my life. (Continues at Time.com)