The Way It’s Done
It’s interesting, you know, reading others’ blogs, finding out how wide the parameters of parenting really are. Everyone seems to have their own style, their own method, their own way of getting things done.
I’ve never really thought of myself as having a “style” of parenting, though I was always sure of two things: I will listen without judgment and I will never, under any circumstances, spank my child.
I figure the rest I’ll just make up along the way. I know what I don’t want, which is a pretty good step, I think, in creating what I do. I see children crying in fits on the street, pulling their parents’ arms and making demands, and I think it is disgusting. Not just wrong - like actually, in the complete sense of the word, disgusting. To think how these kids have developed the art of manipulation so well at such young ages makes my stomach turn! In a way, they are already adults, fighting in a race to get what they want, refusing to be left empty-handed, poisoned by consumerism!
I want my kid to be a kid, to be able to live inside his imagination and pull from the inspiration of what only his mind could create. I don’t want him to be reliant on the newest and latest gadgets and games to make him happy. I want to surprise him with presents when he least expects them and watch the glow on his face when I tell him I love him.
We all have an image of how we wish our children to be, how we want them to grow up. I honestly don’t think the mother of the screeching, red-faced, angry kid thinks, “I just don’t care.” I think she’s pressured and under stress, tired and worn out; she’s been used, abused, left. She doesn’t take care of herself, so she takes it out on her kids by keeping them trapped where she is, in that spiraling pit of unhappiness. Her children, then, know no other way than to scrape the bottom of life, grovel until their eyes are bloodshot and whine about how it’s all so unfair!
I truly believe the more I love myself and the more I can learn to be gentle, forgiving and trusting of myself, the image I have of my child will only prove more and more possible every day.
October 24th, 2006 01:38
That is a beautiful way of thinking!
October 24th, 2006 12:05
It is really a beautiful thought. One many of us share. The reality is that kids are people. Have you never broke down and whined about something or cried because your feelings were hurt? As you have gotten older I am sure those instances have become fewer and more controlled but our dear sweet children have not yet learned that control and they will, someday. I am sorry that my beautiful family would disgust you on any given day. We really are a great family and we try really hard not to be worldly and are teaching our kids there is no need to keep up with others in material desires. But they are kids and this is just par for the course, even with the best of them. Albeit some of them do take it a bit too far too often.