Let me start by saying that I love being a parent. Watching your child grow & develop seems to be a most rewarding journey. Just yesterday I spent part of the morning hanging out with Luke and he intentionally leaned over to grab his feet. This was a remarkable move considering what he needs to coordinate to make this happen. Every week there seems to be something new that he's doing and it's very amazing to watch.
As I've sat with Luke over the last while I've begun to think about parenting in the long run. I think about how I was parented...how Andrea was parented...I think about some of my relational tendencies with others...and I wonder how I will impact my child as a parent. Will he look back and think we were too much of this and not enough of that? What will be his relational tendencies when he's my age?
My greatest concern right now is not preparing Luke for life on his own. My hope is to instill virtues & characters traits that I admire in people: patience, generosity, love, hopefulness, positivity, perspective, simplicity, groundedness (to name a few). The concern is that what I lack personally will be magnified in my child.
On our way to St Laurent this past weekend Andrea shared a short passage from a book she was reading. It illustrates a new way of looking at parenting for me. The story involves the son & grandson of Mahatma Ghandi. Here it goes:
During one of the family's stays in South Africa, Arun Ghandi drove his father (this would have been Ghandi's son) into Durban. Having been strictly charged to return by five o'clock, Arun drove the car to be repaired and then raced to the theatre, which was showing a John Wayne double feature. He became so engrossed that he lost all track of time. The movie ended at 5:30. He rushed to the garage, got the car, and drove to pick up his father. His father, anxious that he hadn't returned on time, asked why he was so late. Arun replied that the car wasn't ready. But his father had already called the garage. "I am trying to understand what I did wrong as a parent that you would feel you had to lie to me. So I am going to walk the 18 miles home while I try to figure out how I failed." So without even taking off his dress coat & tie, he started walking, suit, dress shoes, and all. As evening fell it became pitch dark. Arun crept along in the car behind his father. During that interminable drive, Arun decided he would never, ever tell a lie again. The goal of Arun Ghandi's parents was not to punish, or to humiliate, or to break their children's spirits, but to transform them.
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To me, this is an amazing story where the parent doesn't blame or erupt on the child, but instead sees the part they played. It may seem a bit extreme to walk 18 miles, but in this case the point hit home for the child. My hope is that I can be a parent that is creative in figuring out ways to teach my son the lessons and character traits that will help prepare him for life.
ThNR Report
8 years ago
