Parenting

Being a parent is not easy, being a divorced parent even more so.  I remember clearly the day each of my kids were born, such elation, such wonder, at the miracle of creation.  The sleepless nights, nights spent pacifying them, comforting them when they were ill, the tiredness and the exhaustion that resulted pales to the joy of watching them learn and grow into little bundles of curiosity with insistent questions about everything in their environment and, the word that every parent anticipates with trepidation, why?

Through their school years, the teenage years and into a young adult.  At each step new challenges for parents.  In my experience, no book, TV program, advice or anything else for that matter can prepare you for these years.  It was during this period of my kids development that I seriously believed that this was the universes way of getting back at me for all the trouble I caused my parents.

The thing is that kids bring home to us the startling reality of our own mortality.  It is this realisation that, some day we too will have to leave this world, that drives us to try and give our kids a better life so that one day, when they sit back and reflect, they can look back with gratitude at the life that was provided for them.

However this is seldom the case.  In our enthusiasm to create a better life for them we give freely of everything we have and instead create a sense of entitlement rather than a sense of appreciation. So the model that we often adopt is flawed, and it breeds arrogance and even contempt instead of gratitude and humbleness.

Therefore I have changed my perspective on parenthood and, at the risk of being wrong, the best that I can do is to provide my kids with the ability to stand on there own two feet, irrespective of the career that they have chosen or what they have decided to do with their lives.  All of this within the framework of values, that form the golden thread in all faiths; honesty, integrity, respect, honour and faith. And the golden rule is to enjoy it and do the best that you can, always.

This I have found is the least trodden path, the one with the most challenges, the one that demands doing the right thing and standing by it. Tough love.  If I am successful, and I pray to God that I am, then I believe that I have given my offspring a head start and have fulfilled my mission as a parent.

Nothing will give me more joy than to see my children happy, content and independent. My prayer goes out for all parents out there that they too are successful, on whatever path they have chosen, and especially to my parents for giving me the tools that allowed me to come to this realisation.

I am grateful and content and most of all happy ;-)

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