What if parenting is not solely, or even fundamentally, about growing up our kids, but rather about growing ourselves up?
I have lived with that question with great affection, looking at my son and feeling utterly grateful for the lessons over many years. I did not yet know when he was little that his playfulness, candor, integrity, and trust were traits I badly needed to re-learn. However, I knew when I saw these traits slowly take backstage, as he was becoming a young adult, that he would have to learn them again, just like me, with his own kids. He knew somehow, as he often said over the past years, that he would need to marry someone who would know how to teach, train, and be the adult because he would most likely be the playmate for his kids.
If we ask most parents what is parenting, they are bound to answer something like: training, mentoring, teaching, passing on to help little ones become adults, essentially to shape those entrusted in their care. This may very well be, but what if this was not the only part of parenting? This is perhaps even the least important part in today’s world, when we badly need to rethink our way forward.
Are you prepared to believe that your kids know things you do not? Are you willing to revisit your childhood and complete with your kids what you could not complete the first time around? What if parenting was a great invitation to rethink your reality and the way forward in your life, as everything is changing around us fast. Are you prepared to look at your children and those of others, as a way to heal what is broken and wounded in yourselves and our society?