As parents, we love and want the best for our children. Depending on our cultural upbringing, our surroundings, and who we are, the love for our kids is manifested in different ways. And in this modern age that brings a plethora of offerings, the choices of what to provide for them can be overwhelming.
Some parents strive to give their children the most expensive school they can afford, and afterward, an extracurricular schedule filled with activities no less scholastic than schooling itself, whether it be in sports, in arts, or in academics. On the plus side, it exposes the children to a variety of topics that they may have a better chance at discovering their interests. Having these activities are considered brownie points on a college application. But it can be weary on both parties, not to mention financially taxing. On weekdays, working parents hire taxi services to chauffeur their children between activities. On weekends, they spend all their time being chauffeurs themselves. These kids are just as busy as adults. They have no time for themselves. It must be exhausting.
Some choose to drill their children through one activity in hope that they will be outstanding at it. And if they become exceptional, they can make a career out of it. For these kids, the busyness is just as much as those who do everything. In addition, the pressure to perform is inherent for both parties. Some kids are great at listening, and they do what they’re told. But for others, one day they’ll resent their parents if they won’t turn out to love what they were told to do all of their childhood. They’ll wonder what else is out there. FOMO syndrome is in all, but these kids will fault their parents for their shortcomings.
Our desire for our children to excel academically sometimes overtakes our sensibility to teach them the fundamental qualities to growing up. We leave secondary in educating them how to be healthy adults, both mentally and physically. We fail to teach them independence, how to take care of themselves. In striving to keep their life trouble-free in order to focus on their academics, we fail to teach them perseverance, the ability to overcome adversities. In expecting performance, we fail to teach them self-acceptance. And we do all of it in the name of love for our kids.
Perhaps it is wise to look at parenting an exercise in salvation. When we birth a child, naturally we give them all the love. Giving them our resources, sweats, and tears, we pour into them our hopes and dreams. But because they are not us, they won’t do what we tell them to do, won’t turn out to be what we hope for them to be. For all of our lives, we’ll worry about them and want to protect them from heartaches, but we can’t. And as much as we may want them to be near us, we must let them go, for this is the natural order of life.
“And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of Children. And he said:
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.”
– Kahlil Gibran
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