Reconsidering the purpose of parenting
What if the point of parenting is not who the child is becoming, but who we are?
"The person you are is the person your child will become."
Coach John Wooden
In our modern world, fear is often the primary emotion we bring to our parenting.
Fear about installing the car seat correctly when leaving the hospital for the first time. Fear in babyproofing the house. Getting into the right nursery school. And so on.
Life, let alone children, is unpredictable.
There are just too many variables and vectors of things that can go wrong. It can be paralyzing. We just want our kids to grow up healthy and happy - with a fighting chance of having a good life.
In this milieu of good intentions and accompanying worries, it is easy to keep our focus on the child to the exclusion of all else.
But the longer I parent, the more I become convinced, that our focus is misdirected.
What if the point parenting is not who the child is becoming, but who we are?
Worries and concerns about their development are not off base. But what if far more is imparted to our children by how we choose to live our lives - rather than by what we do or say.
How can we expect someone to become something that we are not willing to become ourselves?