We do not need to learn how to be who we already are. The first skill a child learns is to be a parent. A little girl watches to be a mother a little boy a father. It happens in real time every moment. Happy mommy and daddy who enjoy each others presence. Who share every precious detail of their lives. A contentious man and woman living in a marriage they resent, mother and father to children they have conceived together. No respect for each other suffering on one or both having already given up but waiting for the just the right turn of events to put them in the most positive light as they sever the bond of marriage vowed before God and witnessed by everyone closest to them.
None of this is lost on the child. It is as we grow that we become less willing to do the work necessary to share vital relationships. After all, unlike the child we can take care of ourselves now.
Children are acutely sensitive to every turn of attitude. Children seek to maintain peaceful relationships with everyone they know not the least of which their parents. You know how important this is, and fragile when you begin to hear older children use the threat “ I am not going to be your friend anymore” to manipulate.
This is the beginning of accountability and a very grown up approach to life. This is what we do, only as time has passed we have learned to do it quietly.There are those who have so lost themselves in trying to be whatever popular culture’s every changing standard is and they do not know who they are.
Mothers and fathers are the foundation of a peaceful world.
