(This article is part of our series on self awareness)
Recently, my daughter and I were at a party at her friend’s place. There must have been 8 or 10 girls, all of the same age there. Many of us parents were meeting each other for the first time. We all wanted our kids to behave the best and make us proud.
You’ve been in such a situation before, right? You’re at a party, or a get together, or some kind of gathering and you desperately want your kids to behave so everyone can see what a great parent you are. Your chest swells with pride when your kids behave appropriately, and you feel sad for the poor parent whose kids are acting out.
Here’s the thing though. Life is not all black or white. If you did a good job as a parent, yes, perhaps your child(ren) will behave well. If you’re a lousy parent, yes, they might misbehave.
Between these two black-and-white cases though lies the fact that your kids are human. No matter how well you parent, or how much they would like to behave, unless you raise a robot with no emotions and feelings, there will be cases where they’ll just not behave the way you want them to.
The Bigger Picture
Now broaden that expectation a little more. We all want our kids to succeed. Yes, we want them to succeed for their own sakes. But we also want them to succeed for our sakes. Because their success validates what good parents we’ve been.
We want them to score the highest in the tests. We want them to be the class toppers. We want them to win medals in sports. We want them to gain recognition in extra curriculars.
If they fail, somehow we fail.
So we prod them on. To be successful. At all costs.
