Jonathan Finch
(You create a lot of anxiety for your kids and you’re not being great. You’re being fluking stupid!)
The more I think about it the more I think that creating anxiety in children is a really negative thing to do. It’s so easily done as well. And it’s done by adults who think they are highly responsible people. Those adults are inevitably close to children, those children are in their vulnerable years, and just guess what? Those adults I’m thinking of are PARENTS. Yep, let’s shout it out loud. “I’m a parent, and I’m bloody proud.”
How do we as parents create anxiety in our children? Well, we can threaten them with pain, we can imprison them in small underground rooms, we can torment and torture them, but in general we do it without really thinking! We don’t respect them. We don’t give them importance and time. We diminish their self-respect by not respecting them ourselves.
<a href="https://pixabay.com/en/man-problems-depression-soul-2799918/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Source</a>
There are other pretty powerful ways of creating anxiety. We are fickle with our children and we are not there for them. We make them cling on to us more when we are present because they know we are suddenly going to be absent. We chop and we change and we shove them off on people who don’t really want them or if they do want them, they are not wanted by the kiddywinks themselves. We just darn create insecurity which is a sure-fire way of generating anxiety which may later on lead to all sorts of “things” like depression, overdependence, poor self-esteem, fickleness, irritation, anger, aggression, bad choice, suicide, etc.
<a href="https://pixabay.com/en/crying-baby-baby-face-expression-2708380/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Source</a>
So spend good, quality time with your kids. Listen to them. Understand them. Make sacrifices. Be good to them. Don’t flap them off just because you’re feeling rough. Make them number one. Make them feel they are important. Don’t make them feel you are important and they take second or worse third or worse one-hundred-and-twenty-fifth place in your life of busy activities and number-one concerns.
Be good, kind, tolerant, understanding. Be empathetic.
And if you can’t do these things very well and you think I’m being ridiculous, then don’t bloody well have kids. And that piece of advice should be slapped across all those genders out there who believe in their own greatness. (What’s humility? It’s coming to terms with yourself as flawed not “I am the greatest.” It’s also creating good, decent kids not highly aggressive and competitive midget machines that grow into monstrous mouths!)
Now, I’ve had my say. So there.
Seems everyone has an opinion on how to raise kids. I think they learn more by example than by what we say.
“It’s not as easy as it sounds” – yes, agreed. Thank you for your thoughts on the matter. Lots of articles could be written on what makes a good parent, and then we’d need the children to comment on the comments!!! (and of course their comments would be wrapped up in all the blankets of subjectivity – which in the end are probably what underpin every endeavour, even the endeavour of science which then comes to claim respectability through its well-thought- out criteria of “objectivity”. N’est pas? (Final thought : Am I right in seeing only men commenting here on parenting!? And shouldn’t someone be saying my images are gender-biased..or, worse, manipulative!?)
I think the best job and the hardest job I have ever had is being dad. As much that there were things they don’t tell you as you start the job. There are things that you suddenly are resonsible for.
Love the piece Jonathan!
Thank you for your thoughtful comment. Yes, it is a job and it’s not easy. Special empathy, real qualities, a good bit of selflessness, & other “things” sometimes do the trick.
That is so very true! Thanks for the great piece!
Indeed, achieving a decent figure to be called adult is not identic by maturity, holding parental status after a child is born does not automatically make a person or a couple become responsible parents with maturity, effectivity and wisdom. For that reason, a true vision and set of principles and commitments must be had from the beginning on the basis of compassion. But for sure, it’s not as easy as it sounds.