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Today's
Meditation:
I
try to keep these words in mind whenever I'm dealing with
children. These words help me to decide how to act
around them, how to treat them. I have to decide
just what actions of mine will help them to grow stronger,
and those acts usually consist of encouraging, listening,
and allowing them the space to make their own decisions--
and even their own mistakes.
Far
too often, I believe, we adults think that our job is to
control children's thoughts and actions and reactions in
order to make them "better" kids. Somehow
we think that we know what kids need, and we think that
we're the ones to give it to them. Unfortunately,
that type of control usually ends up causing kids to feel
much less in control of their own destinies, and it causes
them to fear situations and people with which they haven't
had a chance to deal yet.
We
spend billions of dollars every year on therapists and
medications to try to reclaim a grasp on our own
lives. We spend a lot of time and effort battling
beliefs and ideas that are destructive to us, trying to
overcome things that were instilled in us in our
childhoods. From being called ugly or stupid to
being criticized for doing something "wrong" and
never attempting it again, there are many things from our
younger years that we carry around with us, always trying
to get rid of them or overcome them.
We
have to decide: what will we contribute to the lives
of our young people? Will we give input into their
lives that will allow them to grow into healthy, stable
adults, or will we contribute to the destructive baggage
that they carry around with them? On the day I die,
I hope that I can look back on my life and say yes, I've
contributed to the positive growth of many young people--
I
haven't guaranteed their success or their stability, but I
have contributed to the positive sides of their lives.
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