Parenting comes with no manual, nor does being a child, so unfortunately we are stuck with what is we are raised to believe, what we see on T.V., and what we our experiences bring our perspectives to believe. I have been thinking of parenting for a while now, since I have no children of my own, I am in my early thirties, and am at the crossroads of having to make the choice to create a life or to go on living as J and I do, this has been on my mind a lot, and that is an understatement.
Luckily, I have tons of different mothers and fathers to study, I have four nieces, and almost every single one of my best friends have had a child in the last few years, I get to see what I would do, and of course, what I would not do. It is not funny, but more sad, I see people who have had children for the wrong reasons, and then I see the extreme opposite, people that want to put all efforts into bring a person to make choices that could make our world a far greater place. None of these people parent in the same way, nor do any of them follow some sort of recipe, but it stuns me to see, the basics are always the same.
For the ones that are what I consider successful, there seems to be a perspective that it is not indeed what they want as a human but, what they want for their child. I am not talking “things” here, please do not misunderstand what I am saying, these people want to give the gift of kindness, understanding, self respect, and honesty to this little creature. They are not so much self sacrificing, but more empowering.
For the ones that I see failure in, I see them wanting “things” for their child, but the difference is that it is just things that make THEM as parents feel better. A child is to love them, or almost like a dog would be, for them to be a companion with. These people usually buy too many gadgets, focus on what others might think, and talk about how the child makes them feel. They usually complain constantly about how they are not getting what they need, like time, energy, sleep and sound utterly inconvenienced. There is nothing that ever said a child would be easy, I have never read any article that exposed that side of raising a human being. Sounds to me like we are raising a bunch of martyrs! In this day and age, with all the birth control, pro choice, and overall options that we as Americans have, you made the choice to have the child, take a little accountability here.
The reason that I am writing this all down, is I guess is makes me sad to see all the children out there that have this cross to bear, to try to figure out once they get out of the home that they grew up in what really counts. Some never do, and then they breed, and then we have some weird trickle down scenario that ends up being our next generations. All because these people had kids for the wrong reasons.
Why did you have children?
What kind of person do you want to raise?
Who do you want them to become?
What gifts are you giving them?
My heart is with you on your journey,
Lizzy
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