Parenting

I'm certainly not a traditional parent by any means.

When I had my son I was young and just beginning to figure out how to take care of myself much less a child. There were a lot of tough times but the happy memories outweigh them by a landslide. When I wrote the post below he was a small child so it's interesting to read now and realize, maybe I knew what I was doing after all.

As parents we want to shelter and protect our children. Occasionally, in doing so, we stifle them. In an effort to protect them from all the terrors of reality, we raise naive children who grow up to be naive adults. They struggle to make it in the world or get taken advantage of by those less giving. As parents we have to realize our job is to teach. We teach them right from wrong. We teach them about the harsh terrors of reality. We teach them how to deal with the "hiccups" of life. Most importantly we teach them how to enjoy the simple pleasures in life. Once we've taught them all we can; we can only sit back and hope they make the right decisions and learn from their mistakes. I'm not a Doctor or Child Psychiatrist, just a successful adult who used to be a kid and remembers that as a parent.

I'm guessing I wrote that around the time my son was 7 or 8. I still had a lot of parenting to do. Now he is graduating from high school and my job has been done for some time now. I guess I'm a pretty good teacher or a really lucky parent because he is a wonderful human being. He isn't out drinking and partying it up like I was at his age. Instead he's talking about traveling the world and interested in solar energy and marine science. He's still young so he waivers on what he wants to do here and there but overall he has a sense of making the world a better place. As a parent, I stand back and tell him he can do whatever he sets his mind to. As a teacher, I guide him along the path of how.