Getting Real About Parenting....

I’ve been reflecting a lot of late about why parents are so unloving and cruel to their own children.  I’ve also been reflecting a lot about why God enables us the free will to hurt our children.  After all, what choice does the child have with regard to the environment it is born into?  Who is there to protect the child against something over which it has no control?  Why did God allow my parents to be unloving to me?

I suppose the first question is, what constitutes hurt?  This is how I see it – any projection of annoyance or anger, verbally abusing or chastising, belittling, humiliating, yelling, physical abuse (smacking). Or let me put it this way – any feeling towards a child that is not a projection of love.

Let’s establish some basic principles.  The expression or projection of anger towards another is simply a refusal on our part to feel what something that is being triggered within us.  No-one outside of ourselves is responsible for us getting angry, they are simply a trigger.  Now our anger simply overlies a fear that we don’t want to feel, and our fear overlies a level of grief that we don’t currently want to feel.

We are unloving to our children, simply because we don’t want to feel our own feelings.

I’ve attached a link to a video, showing the physical abuse of a child, which the father feels is fully justified.  Thanks Fiona (www.vibrantfamilies.com) for posting this for others to find.  This man takes his abuse to the physical level, but reflect on the times when you have been this angry with your children, as the emotional projection at them is also damaging.  Ask yourself if you really think God wants you to parent this way.  Would you  treat your pet this way?  Would you treat someone elses child this way?  If you did this to a random person walking down the street, you would be arrested and charges with assault.  Why then does a different standard seem to apply for a parent and their own child?

http://www.vibrantfamilies.com/?p=688

  

Take an honest look into the eyes of your child, and see the fear that is there for them when you are angry with them.  They have no understanding what is happening to them.  As far as they are concerned they were just going about their business, and all of a sudden, they have this big, angry person in front of them getting angry, maybe yelling and worse, physically harming them.  Put yourself in their shoes, and it is not hard to imagine the terror that they must be feeling at that moment.

If you feel angry, be angry, but go somewhere else to do it.  If you want to yell at something, yell at something, but yell at something that won’t be hurt by it. Note I said something, not someone.  If you want to hit something, hit something, but hit something other than the precious gift you helped to bring into this world.

There is much, much more to say about parenting, and particularly parenting from Gods perspective, but that will be another day.

Take Care

Justin