Do you have kids? Want to buy some? I’m just kidding, but sometimes don’t you just feel like that? They tell us we are supposed to listen to our kids, to help them navigate the reef waters of adolescents, but at the same “They” inform us that the adolescent brain is not even finished growing! The part of the brain that controls a child’s emotion and the control of those emotions is not even working yet – not till anywhere between 17 and 25!

If I sound bitter or worn out, I’m not – my children (of course) are little saints, and no trouble at all! Did you ever hear a parent say that? If you have then you know where the liars are in the room. Have you ever been in one of the new age classrooms where the children get to make all the rules? The outsiders first reaction is; “where are the adults?!” Let’s face it… our children need guidance. How long they need it for remains to be seen, but guidance they need. You can let a horse pull the cart anywhere it wants to, but you still have the reigns so if the horse (who’s brain is not fully baked yet) decides to walk off the cliff, YOU can stop it!

So, what’s a mother or father to do? Well, we can read all we want from child psychologists… Spock, Freud, Erickson (my personal favorite); they all have something to say, some good, some just strange. Our children are our children because they picked us; I have faith in this. They picked us because they have to learn something from us. The problem is by the time they get here, they have forgotten what they want us to teach them, and of course we don’t know exactly what they want to learn… so we teach them all that we know. Here’s the rub though – surely teach as much as you would like from books and things, but the biggest lessons they learn from us is by watching and listening to how we interact with life, not from any chapter from a book.

We must teach our children not so that they will be like us (they will NEVER be like us) but rather teach them so they will be better than us. Our children will dance into the future while we crawl into our last resting place to slumber for a time.

Teach them how to dance well.

Love and Bright blessings ~ Richard