Just ordinary

Raising kids.  Can anyone possibly not think it isn't a full time job?  With huge responsibility?  With outcomes that are essentially engineered by those raising them....good or bad?

So often I see parents who:

• go way overboard doing all they can to ensure their kids that they are so special that they are super kids, when they are just normal everyday kids
• push and push their kids to be super kids (particularly in sports)
• "adultize" their kids at an age that is way too young
• steep their kids in mega-doses of self esteem and importance.

Their focus seems to be on creating an extraordinary kid.  I find this amusing, and sad.  In so many ways they seem to forget that they are kids, and perhaps are trying to make them into something they (the parents) were not. 

This is not to say that their parenting role is totally off base.  Rather, it's saying that perhaps the priorities are just a bit skewed.  I read a piece a while back dealing with parenting, and thought it hit the nail right on the head.

Make the ordinary come alive

 

Do not ask your children to strive for extraordinary lives.  Such striving may seem admirable, but it is a way of foolishness.  Help them, instead, to find the wonder and marvel of an ordinary life.  Show them the joy of tasting tomatoes, apples, and pears.  Show them how to cry when pets and people die.  Show them the infinite pleasure in the touch of a hand.  And make the ordinary come alive for them.  The extraordinary will take care of itself.

 

A very basic, and somewhat old-fashioned bit of advice there.  Yet it is that same advice that will help prevent 12 year old girls from fashioning themselves as 25 year olds, and help prevent boys from learning all of the true life lessons of boyhood so that he is well prepared some day to actually be a man.

 

The best gifts a father can give his kids is unconditional love and seeing to it that they spend their childhood being ordinary kids and not trying to make them something they are not, nor ever will be.  And that can be accomplished by being the spiritual leader of the house....all.the.time.!!!