Dear Parent, This Is The Truth Your Children Hardly Say
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One of the most universally accepted notions is the difficulty of parenting.
I'm not set on puns but parenting, by the general admittance of those who have experienced it and are experiencing it, is no child’s play.
Intentionality and love are believed to be important virtues of good parents. You can't achieve anything in that job without setting your heart to success, yet by some examples, it guarantees nothing.
It's also a job that doesn't measure success with generalisable indicators, yet what is deemed successful parenting may be steeped in human expectations. At the root of all, a successful parent is expected to be he or she who has raised a responsible and exemplary human from cradle to adulthood, regardless of the circumstances faced and what the desires of the child may be. And we all know that's again, no child’s play.
Children grow up to love different things. Our exposures as individuals determine our most immediate desires. We want what we can imagine, what we feel, what we hear. Sights and sounds help to shape our aspirations and many times, they run directly opposite what others including our parents may want. Yet, parents are expected to guide us, lay a pathway to responsibility and raise good people.
Their social value and achievements will be judged based on what we are able to do with our lives. The ‘perfect’ parent is the one who raises a great child and also the one who loves all his or her children regardless of what becomes of them. Isn't that just so complex?
This partly explains the friction that happens a lot of times between children and their parents. Everyone is protecting his or her pride and ego. You want to do what you think will pave a way for you. A good parent insists on his or her way because others have done the same and it worked for them.
They won't put your life to chance. Why chase the music lane when you are nailed on to get a job and good social ranking as a medical doctor? Does that mean a successful music career won't make them proud parents too?
Why will they support you to become an athlete when there are fewer jobs than the people available for them? Some parents have supported such aspiration and succeeded and others have backed all of their children’s ambitions and it didn't end well.
If they support your dream to become an engineer, you should get something after all, they believe. It's their thinking, but nothing is a given. It's all Xs and Os.
My Dad was super proud this morning when he saw this in the newspaper. For the longest time, my parents didn't understand what I was doing hehe, but they supported regardless. May the good lord keep them around for a long time so they can reap the fruits of their labor - Tunde Onakoya on his Chess journey
In the process of defiance, parents and their children may go at loggerheads, each party wanting their will done, and fully convinced by their beliefs. The one who has enough resources wins the fight. Some parents threaten their children with denying them what they need. Tough love, they say it is.
The courageous child damns all consequences and majority go by their parents’ will. At the end, a win is everyone’s win, and a loss, sadly is also everyone’s loss, but this time, the parents get the blame. And the child reaps the pain. Everyone is involved, it's a familial burden.
The parents bear the blame of not looking too far ahead. In the child’s case, he's expected to be accepted regardless, as that will be love, and what a parent should give under every circumstance.
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As a parent, you must realise it's the world against you. Triumph is general, celebrated by all, and one in which everyone lays claim to the piquance of the broth, and defeat, starkly is personal. It's yours to bear alone.
These are conversations parents must have with their children. There are many things to unpack and everyone just wants to have a sense of responsibility to their lives, even at very early ages. Those eyes and ears are such key vehicles of dreams and desire that it has to take incredible influence to change such notions. Sometimes, it's just about healthy, positive and mindful conversations.
It’s important that parents understand that show of force, despite how well it works out sometimes guarantees failure more than success. That two-way conversation is important in order to avoid children harbouring great regret and pain about their relationship with their parents. Yet, many parents never mean to hurt their children. They just don't understand how to do it differently.
Under this one Instagram post, there was a gathering of bitterness against parents - an eye opener
Many people hold severe grudges, although muffled and thawed, against their parents and reveal it to others when there's a sense of collective dejection and pain. Parents have often gone out of their ways to make their children live fulfilling lives, firstly for love, secondly for ego - what the streets will say and what the world will see; and thirdly, for their own future. It is complex and complicated.
It could breed relentless love or eternal hate, or a love-hate relationship hoisted on the strong shoulders of memory. Some children love their parents when their memory of them is positive and hate them when the memory of them is negative, yet some parents have found ease, peace and fulfilment in their children.
https://x.com/Tunde_OD/status/1783913771565506787
There's no mastery to it. It's not taught in schools and everyone, one way or the other, gets to have a taste of that responsibility - parenting and guardianship.
Despite the immense gratitude many people have for how their parents nurtured them to freedom, there are so many feeling hard done with the decisions their parents took sometimes. Some children also took drastic decisions that never amounted to success, and have their parents to blame for it. Call it a blame culture and you won't be wrong but children really feel stung by their parents’ actions. When it's good, it's great, when it's bad, it's terrible.
We all just need to talk. The bile is real!