Guide or By-stander?
Guide or By-Stander?
This morning I was voice messaging Gus (I am just going to refer to her by her first name without much explanation, as I assume you all know who she is to me now - @bemarvellous on Insta for those who don't know her, and should!). I was replying to a message Gus left me, and the realisation came to me that we have moved from the paradigm of ‘controlling’ our children (not good!), to being scared by-standers in their lives! We fear being the overbearing parents of the generations before, which many of us rightly have trauma associated with, on top of societal pressure to pander to our children's every whim. We have therefore moved from one extreme to another, and it has led us to being a by-stander in our child's journey through developing their beliefs and values.
Children don't have the emotional capacity to decide what is right and wrong for themselves, and so are left out in a world where peers, of their own age, often manipulated by social media, are the ones that define their beliefs and values. This does not lead to an emotionally healthy adult, and in turn does not lead to a healthy society. I was listening to a great podcast last week about homeschooling where the woman reflected that children in the normal system spend the majority of their lives with other children their own age. When we expand on this, they get up in the morning and are rushed out the house. They come home at the end of the day (possibly after after school clubs), do their homework, then likely watch TV or play on their games console, and then go to bed and repeat. They are not exposed to the wide variety of ages in society, and different opinions, and even worse they are rarely in conversation with their parents about both their values + beliefs, and those of their parents. Strong family values are a precursor to a strong + stable adult. They may grow up to disagree with the values they have been taught, but the conversation + healthy debate that hopefully would have happened in the home as those values were being shared throughout their lives, gives them a solid foundation with which to define their own as they grow older.
We must remember we play the crucial role of being our child's guide. But then that takes a lot of personal unpicking of our wounds + trauma, so we can be in a healthy state to do that. The work must be done though, because we are losing our children, and as they slip, they are moving out into the world without strong core beliefs, foundational values, integrity, will, and a sense of who they are and what their role is in the world. They are lost. In turn society is malleable. It starts with fixing this within the family. No longer being bystanders, but doing the work, and being the guide.
This week’s Podcast Wild & Free
This week I am guided towards: Dr Peter McCullough