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The importance of parents

December 13th, 2004 · 1 Comment

Posts on the importance of parenting

  • Ilona linked to Victoria’s Your Message

    In exploring the enneagram, Riso and Hudson have identified ‘lost messages’ that we needed to hear as children but didn’t. The absence of these words may be at the heart of our most basic fear. And unconsciously we may still be seeking to hear these words from others.

    Ilona evaluated some of these messages against her own life.

    Why can I expose all this? Because I know we all have something…. and if we don’t now, we will. The Human Condition, people.

    I know I have recently been seeing some of these “lost messages” and aching from what remains. Some of the statements on Victoria’s list resonated with me as truths I need to know deeper within me. I need to know Truth. I need to feel safe.

    Like Ilona, I wonder which messages I am failing to pass onto my children. I need to take time to reflect. To pray for a more-perfect love. And to pray for grace.

  • Chris O’Donnell linked to Eminem is Right by Mary Eberstadt. Although I am not familiar with Eminem or with most of the music on the market today, I am familiar with the pain of divorce, the way it feels to be a child when the knife slices through the family. Reading this piece reminded me of all the emotions I had in adolescence. I simmered angst inside me. Outside I may have looked like a typical teen or perhaps a rather square peg. But in a public way, I would allow myself to express emotions through my writings. I scribbled short stories, sitting in the upstairs hallway for hours, curled around a spiral notebook. They were sad, bitter tales, and I felt life was a sad bitter pill. One of my teachers told me that in my writings my characters “always got rained on” and it was true. Writing was my way of yelling, screaming back at the world that had caused me so much pain. My stories were the acceptable solution I had found to express my grief and sorrow, my anger and depression. Music is an acceptable solution for many others.

    From the article

    Meanwhile, a small number of emotionally damaged former children, embraced and adored by millions of teenagers like them, rage on in every commercial medium available about the multiple damages of the disappearance of loving, protective, attentive adults — and they reap a fortune for it. If this spectacle alone doesn’t tell us something about the ongoing emotional costs of parent-child separation on today’s outsize scale, it’s hard to see what could.

  • A Nation of Wimps by Hara Estroff Marano quoted David Elkind, whose book The Hurried Child impacted me when I read it last year.

    “We focus so much on our own children,” says Elkind, “It’s time to begin caring about all children.”

    The article is an intense one, critiquing the level of worry and control parents exert over play, referring to cell phones as “eternal umbilicus”, containing some truth, but I also think I know what Lisa Williams might think about it (thanks to her comment on my post today!). [Via Rex Hammock]

    • Tags: family

    1 response so far ↓

    • 1 O'DonnellWeb // Dec 14, 2004 at 5:37 am

      A Nation of Wimps

      Summary: Parents are going to ludicrous lengths to take the bumps out of life for their children. However, parental hyperconcern…

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