I know many people my age with young children, both single and married. It is the thing to do and get done in your late-twenties, but I also knew some of these people when they were children, and in a strange way, I find their intense and heavily doctrinal parenting to be terribly hypocritical. There is no fault in having a family, especially if you've taken the financial steps to control one, but these people raise these children outside of the memory of themselves. They suppress the child I knew; the cigarette smoking, fellatio inclined, shoplifting girls and boys that I spent my youth with. They exercise what remains of those youthful rebellious emotions on the weekends, when they can attend night clubs and slowly understand the gap between our generation and the next younger.
They are doing the same things our parents did until they figured out that their children were in their twenties and had raised themselves, understood consequences themselves. I speak to them and they live double-lives with split-personalities. They read both children's and adult books, they are well-skilled at both playing, and playing the field. If they are married, life is their children, work is for their family, and life can become, for most Americans, as hopeless as that sounds. But this is a plan, a passed-down plan that most of us believe in. We think that the weak simply can't maintain it, the even weaker never do it. We respect the great people in our nation, but we respect them more when they've developed a growing, healthy family.
So why can't all of us be great? Why can't parents simply connect with their children the way our parents were supposed to? In our rebellious times, it was understanding we needed. We were raised in the mold of people who chose not to truly understand us, and my generation was raised wholly on television and the idea of extra-familial role models. The best way to show a child that you care, is not through intense doctrine and bragging that you've maintained.
Everyone maintains. They love their families just like you do. Stop pretending to be unique.
The truly unique help their children find importance and reason in things. When you broke the rules, what was the reason? When you suffered consequences, what was the reason? When you're done teaching a toddler how to understand the "who, what, when and where," most of the people I've ever known, failed to understand that the "why and how" need to be taught for the rest of life. And that way, your children will really never repeat your mistakes.
They are doing the same things our parents did until they figured out that their children were in their twenties and had raised themselves, understood consequences themselves. I speak to them and they live double-lives with split-personalities. They read both children's and adult books, they are well-skilled at both playing, and playing the field. If they are married, life is their children, work is for their family, and life can become, for most Americans, as hopeless as that sounds. But this is a plan, a passed-down plan that most of us believe in. We think that the weak simply can't maintain it, the even weaker never do it. We respect the great people in our nation, but we respect them more when they've developed a growing, healthy family.
So why can't all of us be great? Why can't parents simply connect with their children the way our parents were supposed to? In our rebellious times, it was understanding we needed. We were raised in the mold of people who chose not to truly understand us, and my generation was raised wholly on television and the idea of extra-familial role models. The best way to show a child that you care, is not through intense doctrine and bragging that you've maintained.
Everyone maintains. They love their families just like you do. Stop pretending to be unique.
The truly unique help their children find importance and reason in things. When you broke the rules, what was the reason? When you suffered consequences, what was the reason? When you're done teaching a toddler how to understand the "who, what, when and where," most of the people I've ever known, failed to understand that the "why and how" need to be taught for the rest of life. And that way, your children will really never repeat your mistakes.
No comments:
Post a Comment