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Should You Become a Parent?

02 Friday Feb 2018

Posted by in About Reno, Aging, Communication, Generational, Lessons of Life, Opinion, parenting, Pride, Relationships, Respect, Women

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NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! …okay, that’s out of my system. The following is my opinion of whether a person should become a parent. I don’t have a degree in child development, nor do I work with children or parents in any capacity, other than being a parent and the routine contact with other parents. Not being qualified to talk about a topic, including parenting, has never stopped me before, so why would today be any different?

The Smith's and the Waskey's: Parents Extraordinaire

Parenting:  Understanding who is in charge…(hint: it’s the one in front)

Being a parent is the most important, full-time job in the world. It has been around since…well, forever. There are people who are amazing parents and there are people who should never be allowed near children. Most of us fall in the grey area in the middle.

There are definitely people who should never become parents. It not a majority, but it is a significant number. It is unfortunate that there is not a test for parenting. The greatest crime in the history of the world is a parent that inflicts physic and/or emotional abuse on their son or daughter or neglects her or him. 

You? A Parent?

As for the rest of the world, they are the people who should be or are parents. The question is whether or not YOU should be a parent. Here are my thoughts:

You Don’t Like Children?

You may not think that you should become a parent. It’s possible you are correct, but I know a lot of people who were absolutely convinced they didn’t want children, only to have their first child born and hit them a powerful dose of parent dust. Even if you don’t like children, perhaps you just don’t like other children. You never know until you have your own child.

You Will Get the Child You Deserve

I’ve seen this time and time again. A parent is fastidious and super-organized. She has a child that is messy and disorganized. A parent is an introvert. He has a son who is loud and bossy. It is part of the grand scheme. A child is, by design, your teacher and you will learn how to love the behaviors you hate, or you will die.

We spend our young adult lives figuring out who we are, what we like, and what we don’t like, only to have some pint-sized monomaniac systematically shred every value we thought we had. Being a good parent makes you a better person, even if you thought you already were.

Being a Parent is the Reason For Life

There are very few people who are known for their personal contributions to the world. Queen Elizabeth II, William Shakespeare, Rosa Parks, Mahatma Gandhi, J. K. Rowling, are some examples. The rest of us will not be known for our great work but will be known by our children. If we are lucky we might have a descendent that accomplishes something outside of being a parent, but being a parent is the only accomplishment that a person can claim is unique to them.

You Will Fail, Fall Short, But Still Succeed

A good parent fails on a daily basis. I don’t know why, but that is a reality. A good parent can’t let these failures to change her or his enthusiasm for parenting. He or she will discover how insignificant these failures are after the child becomes an adult. I don’t know why. It’s a mystery.

Should You Be a Parent?

Becoming a parent changes your life. If a parent attempts to fight against the change a child makes in her or his life, they will be unhappy. A person who lives all his or her life without becoming a parent has either failed at life or found a substitute for parenting in their life. They may have had great adventures, become a teacher or a mentor, explored their creativity, dedicated themselves to an enterprise or organization, or followed some other path that defined his or her life.

But as a parent, your life becomes defined by the simple act of connecting your life to another with the intent of serving her or his needs until such time that they can do it on their own. After that, you get to watch and be amazed.

You should be a parent if you have the capacity to discover how important, and insignificant you are in the universe.

[COUNT TO 500: 491st Article in PAULx]

Some Links To Consider

Are You Ready to be a Parent?

12 Things You Should Know About Becoming a Parent

Five Reasons We Become Parents

10 Things I Wish I’d Known Before Becoming a Parent

Should I Be a Parent Quiz

In Defense of Parenting:  They Can Be Amazing (If That’s What You Want)

How to Choose Your Favorite Son or Daughter

20 Saturday Dec 2014

Posted by in Aging, Lessons of Life, parenting, Pride, Relationships

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And the favorite child is?

And the favorite child is?

Every family that has more than one child faces a question as to which one is the favorite child. When asked, a parent will typically say, “They’re all my favorite,” which is BS and we all know it. Every parent should be able to know which child is their favorite, even if they can’t be honest about it.

Evaluating Your Offspring

Trying to determine which is your favorite is not as easy as it sounds. Flight attendants giving the pre-flight safety briefing on Southwest Airlines sometimes encourage parents of flying with more than one child to determine which child has the best earning potential in case they have to choose one to give oxygen in the event the cabin depressurizes. This is funny the first 20 times you hear it, but that doesn’t stop  them from delivering the joke 100 hundreds of times.

However, earning potential is a poor criteria for determining a favorite child…unless you have a binding contract that gives you a kickback as a quid pro quo for favorite child status. Quite frankly, successful adults often start out as horrible offspring, so I would not use earning potential as a factor.

Ease of child-rearing is also not a reliable criteria. Often it is the badly behaved child that teaches us the most about ourselves and our skills as a parent. Bad children can also become grateful adults, although one shouldn’t bank on that either.

Children who are ‘Mama’s boy’ or ‘Daddy’s girl’ should not be considered as an indicator of favorite child status. Sweet young children can become Satan’s spawn as teenagers, leaving the parent to wonder what they did wrong…as if the parent is at fault.

Children who remain in constant contact, calling their Mom or Dad daily, may seem like candidates for the favorite child, but this stalking technique is illegal in most states, so it doesn’t seem prudent to consider it as a factor?

So how does a parent determine the favorite child?

I have two adult daughters and a nine-year-old son. My daughters have successful lives, wonderful children and selected husbands that are more intelligent than their (my daughter’s) father. My son works hard to do his best and constantly impresses me with his development out of conservative it’s-all-about-me behavior into liberal, make-the-world better behavior. It would seem I would have a difficult time choosing the favorite….

….but I don’t.

The secret to choosing your favorite child is remembering that life is made up of moments. Every moment (in person or by phone or text) with one or more of my children is a moment with my favorite child or children. Our offspring don’t often understand why ‘family gatherings’ are so important to parents because they don’t realize that it is a time when a parent is rich with favorite children.

This doesn’t mean any of our children fall out of favor just because they are not with the parent at any given moment. Children are part of a parent’s life at all times, but when we have the opportunity to interact with our children, the moment is special.

Children are our legacy and we can move on in our lives reassured that we have accomplished all we needed to when we have raised a child. Our offspring become the painting of life we create as parents.We are artists and when we spend time with our children we can admire the grace and creativity of work that we did without a manual, training or degree. We can’t take credit for everything our children become, but we can smile and be content in that role we played in their lives….even if they don’t realize it.

This holiday season, remember to enjoy your favorite child and know that you are not limited to just one. Happy Holidays!