Once again I am struggling as a parent. Struggling to know
when to back off and when to intervene. When to direct and when to step back.
When to correct and when to let go.
Life can be so challenging when we are parents. Caring
parents who want the best for our children and can see the best in them but
they can’t and don’t want to see the best in themselves yet. And that’s the key
, yet. Are we forcing them to grow up too quickly? Make decisions too rapidly
about where they want to take their lives when half the time they don’t even
know what life means yet.
I step back from my children sometimes and wonder if we, as
a society, have become far too involved in our children’s lives as parents. If
we are pushing them too much to be better than they are meant to be because we
see the way our global society is evolving and are terrified they will be left
behind. Because we believe the world is flat now, not in its shape, but in its
reach through the power of the Internet therefore our children are no longer just
children of our communities, they are children of the world. Putting undue pressures
on them to meet the challenges of this rapidly changing global landscape
without truly understanding what that means because we were not born in this
era of meteoric change. We are just the bridges between the old and new world.
I wonder if we are making decisions for them when they
should be making their own decisions. Wondering if we are taking their independence
from them because we don’t think they are capable of making their own decisions
– or at least decisions, we want them to make. And sometimes may unintentionally
coerce them to make decisions they don’t want to because they don’t want to
hurt our feelings.
I think about how I was on my own basically from the age of
13. How I was left to my own volition. How only I made decisions about what I
was going to do with my life. How school was important but not as important as
making sure my home life was stable and that meant running a household like I
was an adult.
How I never really studied for exams. I just sailed through high
school without anyone breathing down my neck about my grades or putting
pressure on me telling I could do better. I had no one to tell me the importance
of my education. No one had been to University in my family and I didn’t think
it was expected of me so I never really took school that seriously. But what I
did take seriously was life and living particularly since I had seen my mother
die way before her time. So young and had missed so many opportunities to live the
life she wanted and be the woman she wanted to be.
By pushing our children to do so well in school as if that
is the be all and end all, are we robbing them of their ability to enjoy life? To experience life
and be able to question rather than just wait for answers or think that someone
else will provide them with the answers when sometimes there are no
answers; only experiences. And if they don’t experience, they will never know
the full extent of themselves. Only the
book sense of themselves.
One teacher told us that he worries so much about modern education
because the emphasis is on exam results rather than on children understanding the
school work they are taught and their ability to apply that knowledge to their everyday
lives. So many teachers are bent on teaching students how to answer questions on
exams so the schools can come out with the highest exam results that they are
not teaching children to explore and question. All these teachers are teaching our children is to settle for answers that
may not resonate with them.
Taking me back to my school grades. I was a very bright student
but did not push myself to get all As because it was not that important to me.
What was most important to me and is still important to me is understanding what
I am doing so I can relate that information to my life as well as teach others
that need to be taught.
So I am grappling, grappling with how to be the most effective
parent I can be without being too intrusive and too overbearing that my
children lose confidence in who they are and instead try to become what I think
they ought to be. It is such a delicate balance between effective parenting and
intrusive parenting. Between being that helicopter parent hovering over every
aspect of our children’s lives and caring parents who are there when our
children need us. Making sure the light remains in their eyes and hearts and does not become dim or goes away all together because that would be a travesty to them and to the world.
So I pray I can strike that balance and allow my children to
be who they came here to be and do not spend the rest of their lives trying to
unravel the persona they were forced to be rather than who they want to be. I
pray for the strength to know when they need me not when I need them to be who
they are not. I pray…
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