Parenting: These Three Answers Determine Everything
I originally wrote this article on May 13, 2014.
The answers to these three questions determine every choice a parent makes:
Why did I choose to be a parent?
What kind of relationship do I want with my child(ren)?
What do I want for my child(ren)?
With these three questions in mind, we can better understand why parents do what they do. This has helped me feel emotionally at-peace with whatever parents choose for themselves and their children.
I wasn’t going to have kids. Having a life partner and a career (or, ultimately, my own business) were all I wanted and needed. Also, I thought childhood was horribly vulnerable and scary, and the world wasn’t that great—so, why would I voluntarily subject another human to that? And being as sensitive and conscious as I am, I wondered if I would be able to meet my own standards for what I believe every child deserves—especially since I had never experienced or seen the type of child-rearing I would want to emulate.
But when I was around age 30, my grandfather was dying. It was about a six-month process and I was honored to be able to spend time with both him and my grandmother during the very touching, loving chapter in their lives. From the experience, as I began to appreciate the circle-of-life, a lot of my fears of both living and dying were transformed.
I decided that I would like to put my career on hold to be a parent, that I could do it, and that I had some very valuable, unique things to offer a child.
The reasons I chose to be a parent are two-fold:
For my own growth and healing; ultimately, to break the chain of several generations of dysfunction.
To use my sensitivity and awareness, all that I’ve gone through in life, my own efforts in healing, and my resulting wisdom to benefit someone else in a deep, deep way. Thus, being able to send my children out in the world as healthy, whole and wise adults—blessing the world and making it a better place for all of us to be in.
The type of relationship I want with my kids is one of closeness, trust, and security. We freely communicate. I use my experience, awareness and knowledge to provide guidance. I teach them about relationships and situations, and about what is healthy and what is not. We trouble-shoot life and relationship issues together. Many times they have great advice to offer me for something I’m working through. I am their friend as much as I am their mother. I am their soft-place to fall. I protect them from physical, emotional and psychological harm. I foster their self-respect, self-knowledge, self-love, self-trust, self-expression, self-drive, creativity, peace, privacy and freedom. We are allies. We are family.
What I want for my children is for them to unabashedly live as an expression of who they each are, whoever that may be, in any given moment. I want them to live consciously and authentically, to be personally-responsible for themselves and their lives, to accept only healthy and loving relationships, and to fearlessly stand for what they believe.
We all get to choose what we each want in our parenting. That freedom and opportunity is tremendous and precious.
Warmly,