Last week “The Tennessean” featured a chef I wish I could meet. When asked what was the secret to creating great food, he answered: Start with the best ingredients and don’t mess them up. With my passion for parenting, I immediately thought of this as a parenting lesson. So please let me rant a bit by sharing these, somewhat scattered, thoughts.
We parents start with the best ingredients! More than ninety-seven percent of babies are born perfect, filled with love, over flowing with grace, anxious to learn, and carrying a message from their creator. But we tend to mess them up!
We teach them to lie, cheat, and even to hate! We tell them others exist to serve them, fathers are idiots, and the world owes them everything.
How, you might ask, do we do these wicked things? We want to give them “self esteem” so we tell then they are doing a “great job” when, in fact, they are barely even participating. We ask them who broke the vase, spilled the milk, or tracked mud into the house when we know they did it. Their only way out is lie and say “I don’t know”, blame the dog, or one of the neighbors. We take them out of school to see aunt Jessie’s new baby and give them a note saying they missed school because they were sick! We wait on them day and night and ask nothing in return and wonder why they develop an entitlement mentality.
We put them in their car seats, put on a video, plug in our ear buds and listen to music, or talk on the phone, and complain that our kids won’t talk to us. We let them listen while we brag to our new friends how much we drank in high school or college then we tell them not to drink. We drop them off at church for Sunday School then go have coffee and a roll and return in time to pick them up and cry that our teens don’t want to go to church.
We find time to take them to dance class, gymnastics, rugby, soccer, football, karate, music lessons, voice lessons, perhaps even to their tutor, but never have time to sit with them at the kitchen table and eat dinner. Often times our hearts are in the right place, but our minds give in to their every want.
The philosophers tell us we are where we are because of the decisions we made. So are our kids! Parenting need not be hard if we try to simplify things, reduce our kids dependence on us, teach them responsibility and model the people we want them to become! After listening to a program on parenting one young father said, “It seems everything we do is important!” Yes, I told him, everything is! Try to be the kind of person you want you child to become. Talk and laugh more with your kids and your spouse; eat together, study together, play together, and sleep together (obviously not all in the same bed, but all at the same time).
But, be in charge, be the parent, set limits, let them know what you think and why you think it! Ask frequently what they think and why! You teach all the time even when you don’t know or think you are teaching, so make a conscience effort to teach, teach, teach!
Surely, not all parents do all these bad things. Most parents do a great job! That’s why most kids are great kids who become adults of character, but not all do. Just wanted to share some of the thoughts that chef brought to my mind. I wish to help make parenting easier for you, prevent parents from screwing up, and keep more kids on the right path. I hope this helped a bit! Let me know what you think!
Thank you to all you parents who continue to raise kids we all admire! The whole world appreciates you, and so do I!