Friday, April 18, 2008

Does parenthood bring out the best in you?

or...does it bring out the worse? Many a time I am surprised by what I can or cannot do just to make the little one happy and comfortable. Have you ever felt like that? Like you pause a moment and think...wow.. I didn't know I am capable of that or damn... why can't I get that right? Why isn't it working?

Then as I navigate deeper into parenthood... I found that I am constantly learning or re-learning things. It started to remind me of many things that I used to take for granted or I simple ignored.

It suddenly dawn on me that parenthood is not just about being a parent to a child but also to parent ourselves. There are still many life lessons to learn from it and very often we are too proud to admit it. We tend to shy away from it. At times we think we know best and only to be disappointed with less than desirable results.

For some of us, listening to our parents cease to exist the moment we gain independence. I know I did and it's not necessarily a good thing. Our folks still got alot of great advice waiting to be heard. Then as our children grow and do things to hurt us, how often do you think back whether you did the same to your parents? and how often their actions actually angered you so much that you begin to hate them? but now that you are going through similar situations... you then realised that those actions that was taken on you years before were actually reasonable and you are also doing the same to your children. Next you know.. you will be thinking... I better treat my parents better or else my kids will end up doing the same to me!! Now that got me thinking... are we genuinely wanted to treat our parents better or simply being selfish because we don't want to end up being treated badly or ignored by our children in the future..

What do you think?

2 comments:

Ann said...

Reckon I appreciate my parents especially my mum more now that I am a mother!

And I also have gone back to listening to their advice some of the time!

Moomykin said...

For me, it's no problem relating to my family as we are quite close, and both my boys love my mum and sisters, but don't really know my brothers.

With my in-laws, I always remind them to be polite and to talk properly and even go spend some time playing with them. It's not easy, especially with my FIL, but it's for the kids' benefit that they have a good relationship with their ALL family members.

After all, when they are older and have very little time for you, they'll have even less time with uncles and unties and grandparents.