PARENTING: A CHOICE FOR LIFE
The other day at a family gathering, one of my many aunties accosted me in the hallway saying ‘Dahling, we LUV your page. But I don’t read it as much since we’re old now and we don’t do that Parenting thing anymore’. After a few minutes of the obligatory head nodding and air kissing as I was making a quick getaway, it made me wonder, was she right?.. Do we ever stop being parents?
When does that point where the greatest relationship in life, ‘parent to child’ come to an untimely death? Yes, I agree with my auntie, my page is mostly a good read for young families dealing with everyday dilemmas of bringing up children, but my topics do try and get everyone involved including the grandparents.
When my first child was born, her birth gave rise to a new me. The Parenting me. I was not one of those women who in their adolescence, with innocent girlish glee, snickered with their friends about who I would marry and what my children’s names would be. I was career driven, and having spent a good part of my life in various universities, I had a mission to succeed. But marriage, and shortly, my first child, arrived. I and my heart fell hard. Gone was the need to be bigger and better in my career. I was blissfully happy holding baby, folding nappies and cooing nursery rhymes, umpteen number of education degrees forgotten. The Parenting relationship unlike other relationships in your life will, in my opinion, never end. You stop being a child, you stop being a teenager, you lose friendships, sometimes you even stop being husband and wife, but through it all, being a Parent never has a stop and eject button.
Yes of course in the early years, being a parent is obvious. You need to be there for your children as they grow from infants to children. They rely on you for more obvious needs such as food and shelter, but just like the baby ducks who follow the mother duck, you are their sole source of comfort in the big bad world that they have come into. You need to guide them during their hormonal tumultuous teen years and as they approach semi-adulthood, you cross your fingers and pray to the gods that they have listened to all your good advice and will make the correct decisions in life. Being a parent to an adult is where you will really get tested on your parenting skills. Now that they are out of your house, it does not mean the parent to child relationship has being severed with that last wave goodbye. This is when you need to fine tune your parenting skills, you need to be there but not be too involved, you need to give advice but not criticise. It was probably a lot easier in their toddlers years where if you didn’t like something you gave them a timeout and put them to bed at the end of the day. So parents of small childen, if you think your parenting life is hard, just talk to a parent who’s trying to deal with a tumultuous twenty-year old. That is another kettle of fish.
In all honesty, after three decades and a bit under my belt, I still need my parents. I still need ‘that super couple’ who I know will protect me through thick and thin. Who I know that even though they might wish better for me will still be my biggest cheering squad. They are the only ones who I will trust completely with my children, my life.
So folks in my books, once you’re a parent, you’re always a parent.
It is the greatest relationship that you will ever have in your life. It might have you at your knees in despair one day or bursting at the seams with pride and joy the next. But remember, hug your children tightly, do right by them for if you fail your children, you fail yourselves, for they represent your immortality that will live on through the generations. Never stop being a Parent!