As I look around in our country today I am noticing three very distinct groups of children that are coming into adulthood. There are the children who get absolutely no care at all and do not even get the basic needs met in their lives. These are the children that need to be rescued from the hands of irresponsible, uncaring, and unloving people who have children without a thought or concern for their welfare. These children need our help as a nation but even when rescued there is no guarantee that they will be placed in a more suitable home.
Another group of children are the ones who have thoughtful, caring parents who love them dearly and are willing to sacrifice their time, hearts, and minds to nurture and raise their children as one would a fine garden of prized flowers. These parents give the gift of love, training and discipline, responsibility, adventure, hope, a peaceful home, and a heart of wonder and creativity. These are the children that can look forward to the future with anticipation and the hopes of success. I am not saying these families are perfect as I know we all have our inadequacies in certain areas but these are the families that work together to create an actual family unit.
The most prominent group, I fear, is the group that is being fed, dressed, with basic needs being met but no emotional attachment to parents or any person that truly cares about their emotional needs or external training. This is the group of children that gives cause for concern, not to discount the suffering of the first group, but this group of children will be the core of our country in the very near future. I fear these children are the product of those broken individuals from dysfunctional homes who do consider the act of being a parent as important but do not have the emotional or mental abilities to function as a family. They work hard to keep their families financially stable and give their children their every hearts desire but they are not part of their children’s hearts and minds. There are no rules, discipline, or instructions on how to become a successful adult. There is no closeness, no sharing of hearts or thoughts, and no time spent. There are only material goods producing well dressed, well fed, and ample technological devices to keep their children entertained and comforted.
I love beautiful gardens of flowers and delight in vegetable gardens as well. As I was reading some articles this past week about all the ways there are to care for your garden, how to fertilize, feed, water, prune, and nurture it to its full potential my mind shifted to think about the children in the world today who do not receive the same care that some people’s gardens do. And I thought about all the children who are basically raising themselves because we as a nation have become so very busy with everything but the children. Instead of growing our children up as we do a beautiful garden we are simply leaving them to their selves as we would wild flowers to wither under the heat of the summer sun or be flattened by the strong wind and rain.
There are so many families with both parents working and no one is home when many of these children get out of school. And even if there is someone home there is often no communication between children and their parents, they are carrying on separate lives. This does not just happen in the lives of indifferent parents, but in the lives of parents who desperately love their children but things have gotten so busy and so separated that they are unaware that this has even transpired. It takes a lot of time and deliberate contemplation to be in touch with our children today. We need to sit down and evaluate our lives and see where things have gotten off track. Our responsibility as a parent or parents is to make time to connect with our children, to talk to them about their hearts desires, to instruct them in how to live out their hopes and dreams. Parents are more than the providers and more than one would plant a gorgeous flower garden and then never water, feed, prune, or fertilize those flowers.
We have children who are lost but feeling entitled to receive everything their hearts desire because we have treated them that way, they know nothing of giving, just taking. They have been given everything but love and guidance. What these children need is our time, discipline, and responsibility. They desperately want guidance even if they are not aware of it, just as an infant who throws a temper tantrum and needs our attention, these children who are falling down need our attention. There are parents out there who have children who are getting into trouble constantly and they are wondering why. I am not saying that every child that gets into trouble has not been nourished by their parents, sometimes mistakes are made by good kids. I am talking about the kids that are in and out of the principal’s office, juvenile detention centers, and jail.
For those of you who do not have teenage children yet or kids in their early teens I will let you in on something I found out the hard way. They are considered adults when they are seventeen (the day they turn seventeen) and at that age they end up in the county or city jail. One day you have a child of sixteen and the next you have a hardened adult at seventeen. I can tell you from experience it will break your heart if your child ends up in this situation because of lack of guidance. Some of us are not good disciplinarians; we are tired from work and want to relax so we let things go as far as the kids are concerned. You may let them go while they are young but it will come back to bite you when they are teens and your life will be the story of heart break. You are not doing your children a service by letting them get by. When you do not have time to train them you are robbing them of the tools they need to survive this world and to prosper in it. You are also robbing them emotionally and the odds that they form bonding, long lasting, or healthy relationships are slim, and they will pass this same life along to their own children.
The majority of parents in this category are not intentionally negligent but they are sucked in by the world and the great demand for things. Material things will not produce the outcome in your children’s lives that you really desire for them. Doing without a few things but having their parents spend time talking, playing, and nurturing them will produce long and enduring ties. They will be able to have successful relationships, strong character, be productive members of society, and be able to care for themselves and their children.
Our children are oh so much more precious than the most beautiful, flourishing garden that you have ever encountered. Sometimes they even need pruning, cutting off the branches or leaves that are sucking away the vitality of their lives. We need to be more conscientious about disciplining for their good, teaching them to be responsible, to earn what they get and not be given everything. We need to be teaching them how to be thoughtful of others and their surroundings. They need to learn how to communicate with others in a polite and kind way. They need our experience, good or bad, shared with them so that they can avoid our mistakes. They need our wisdom and our love to guide them through this harsh world. And even though they are getting older they consistently need our protection over them to ensure they make the transition into adulthood virtually unscathed by this world while still seeing the good and the bad through the protective net they have called mom and dad. Grow your children up and nurture them while you have a chance, do not simply watch them get older and wither in the storms of life.
Stephanie has many years of experience as a nanny. She has always loved children and has continuously been involved in childcare activities. Currently she is one of the writers for houstonnanny.com. If you want to get in touch with her, you can email her at stephanie. Houstonnanny @ gmail. com.
Parenting viewpoints from parents in the trenches, because parenting doesn’t come with a manual. In addition to