One thing I have observed about the role of parents in society is that by default of giving life to children, they think they have complete ownership over them – it’s somehow driven by the “they are mine” factor.
I am not saying it is slavery – but it is some sort of control that they think they need to have to drive how their children should think, how they should behave, where they should go, and how they need to represent the family.
Now, I am not a parent and will admit that in many cases of parenting this kind of thinking is appropriate at the early stages of child where they are just getting indoctrinated into the world and need to be guided how to live in society. As a result, it is necessary to teach them the difference between right and wrong, good and bad, good morals, values, etc.
However, in this process I am also seeing one interesting trend in parents – they are continuously seeking to improve imperfections they find in their children. It’s by default of being considering offspring or “a part of me” that they feel they have some control over this.
Many times parents are trying to make children behave opposite to what their true calling is. For example, if a child is interested in cooking but the parents are both professional sports figures they will guide their child to sports instead of cooking.
Somehow parents feel their children need to be a reflection of them. While this is true, it is not a static mirror comparison where by a parent looks at a child and the child sees the parents and it is a perfect mesh.
Children are born through parents to experience and discover life. The discovery of life may have the participation of parents but it is only children who will discover life in person and the parents have no control over this.
I think where the line gets crossed is when parents continuously force an image of perfection in their children – where children are raised to be trophies of perfection that parents can point to others in society to show how accomplished and great they are to have raised such superb specimens.
What parents don’t realize is the amount of stress that they create in children at a very young age to be perfect. On some cases, parents are just not happy about the way their children look just so they can “please others” – they say their kids are too fat, too thin, too ugly, too dumb. This type of feedback at the young age is one of the worse things a parent can do – and if this continuous into adulthood it can be life-threatening to either party.
Bottom line: Parents must completely accept all children with their flaws even through adulthood, stop complaining about the way they look and act, and stop creating trophies out of them to please others.
More importantly, if you have ever been told you have some flaws by your parent I want to let you know that you are perfect as is – it’s your parents who have flaws. They are the ones who are conscious about the way they look and act, based on a variety of reasons of how they have been raised, and are passing that pain down to you.
There is a problem that us human beings continuously seem to bring to light and it’s this – we can’t seem to accept things in life for what they are. We seek perfection everywhere and keep going around looking for it – as if it will appear out of thin air in front of our eyes.
We seek perfection in our homes, our family, our environment, our job and our children – and the truth is that perfection is just an illusion. Things are perfect just the way they are.
What happens when we enter into the spectrum of the search for perfection is that we start to get agitated, frustrated, and impatient. This starts to take over our mind and leads us towards creating additional pain-bodies within us – we get angry, we start hating life, and worse, we start hating those people around us.
Acceptance of imperfection in yourself as a parent and your children is one of biggest realizations you can achieve in life.
This lack of acceptance of children is what generates the “I am just not good enough” feeling within children and contributes to creating more turmoil and violence in the world we live in. As a parent raising children, just start loving your kids for what qualities they are born with. Don’t complicate things by thinking what other people will think if your child does something other than you or the norm or looks different.
Remember, children are born through you to experience life. As a parent, don’t call out flaws in the ability of your children to perform or the way they look. It’s a gift that you have been blessed with children and they have you as a guide to life for them – accept this gift as is.
As a child, don’t succumb to the flaws parents find in you. The universe loves you just the way you are. You are brought into this world not to satisfy your parents but to realize your true calling, which is an action you will discover in time, which goes beyond acting as a trophy to your parents.
Acceptance is one of the most important ways to achieve unconditional love. We all want acceptance. We are all seeking acceptance. No person should suffer from lack of acceptance, particularly your own children.