hands of child and father on wheat field
In reading articles about parenting, I read something over and over. In each, parents made comments about their children being happy.
“Happiness, isn’t that what we want for our children?”
“He is happy. That is the most important thing.”
As a parent, I am not sure if I have said the above word for word, but I do know I watch my child’s level of happiness.
“How is she doing in school?”, I am asked.
“She seems happy so I think things are going well.” I have said this once or twice.
Perhaps it is because of what is happening in our country that these statements popped out at me. “That is the most important thing”??????
Please do not get me wrong, I do want my child to be happy, but is it really the most important thing? Could this be one of the issues we are having in our world. We care more about making our children happy than making them adults that can take on the world and survive. We don’t want them to experience failure. We don’t want them to suffer. We don’t want them to have to admit defeat in anything.
We berate teachers into better grades. We demand that they get to play every time. We give them trophies because they played.
Maybe, just maybe, and I am ready to get slammed for this, we need to take a lesson from our parents and let the children of today understand that the world of tomorrow will not just be handed to them. They need to earn their way in life. They need to learn how to work. They need to learn how to win with humility and lose with dignity. Yes, they must learn to lose and fail.
As parents, instead of making sure that they are always smiling, we need to let them frown, cry, cheer, laugh, scream. They need to experience happiness, but they also need to understand sorrow, anger, and calmness for without these how can they know what it is to be happy. We need to be there to help them up after they fall, but let them fall. We need to stop them from bodily harm, but let them figure out most things for themselves. We need to let them live and prepare themselves for their future. The future where mommy and daddy cannot call their boss and yell at them for hurting their childs feelings.
So I will protect my child, but I will let her fight her battles based on her age. I will fight them today, but tomorrow she will need to take on, little by little, her own fights.
Don’t get me wrong – I will be a bear when needed, but my cub will learn to survive.