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Today's
quotation:
If I had my
child to raise all over again,
I'd build self-esteem first, and the house later.
I'd finger-paint more, and point the finger less.
I would do less correcting and more connecting.
I'd take my eyes off my watch, and watch with my eyes.
I'd take more hikes and fly more kites.
I'd stop playing serious, and seriously play.
I would run through more fields and gaze at more stars.
I'd do more hugging and less tugging.
Diane Loomans
"If I Had My Child To Raise Over Again"
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Today's
Meditation:
It's hard being a parent for most of us. We have
to balance our own lives with the lives of our children;
our own wants and needs with those of the kids; ways that
we think things should be done with ways that our children
want to do things. We have to make priorities-- and
most of us prioritize the jobs first because, after all,
we need to pay for the home and the food and the clothes
and all the other things necessary to maintain a family,
don't we?
How we treat our children, how we interact with them, the
relationships that we build with them-- those are going to
be some of the most important aspects of their lives when
they grow to be adults themselves. We want to
instill discipline, but do we want to do so at the cost of
never having fun? We want them to learn all that
they can, but should we do so at the cost of having free
time to share with them, being creative and perhaps even
silly? Should we spend the extra hours at the
office, or spend them at our kid's basketball game?
Parenting is a matter of making choices-- as is almost
everything else in life. And many of the choices
that we make for their "benefit" actually end up
making them feel less positive about themselves, less able
to face the world on their own terms because we're forcing
them to adopt our terms.
It's important that we take our parenting seriously, but
not too seriously. They're kids, after all, and they
need our love and support much more than they need our
correction and criticism. So many of us, though,
focus on the latter, while if we were to focus on the
former, our kids could face this world with the knowledge
that there's someone there to support them if they fall,
and they'll be more willing and able to take the risks
they need to take.
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