As my son was hopping around cheerfully in the living room today, it hit me suddenly how much he has grown over this last 5 years. It seemed just yesterday that he came from me and first arrived in my arms, the love I felt was so immense and the sense of responsibility to raise this boy well was unspeakable. He has certainly evolved in so many ways and even if I believe to have been keeping tab on his growth and development all this while, I would be fooling myself as it was just simply impossible. I was not around when he spent his days at school, daycare, his dad's and families, and occasionally babysitter (neither did I feel that I needed to be there always). However, that easily took up almost 80% of a week's time! Life happened, I needed to work and definitely valued the alone time I got to spend whenever possible. But it did not discount the fact how I tend to wonder about all that he got to experience in my absence that has built into who the little boy he is today.
What followed was a precious bonding moment as my son and I spent some time together scrolling through his old baby photos on my phone. I enjoyed answering all the questions he had about the places we went, the funny photos we made, his own silly antics in several cases, the events that took place and other people or things he happened to capture from those photos. Fortunately, I have all those photos to thank because neither one of us could recall so vividly how, why and when they were taken. The boy who sat next to me looked so different already! I could tell from his face that even he could not quite recognize himself. As I sank myself deeper into them, I was telling myself, "Wow, this was how we once met each other." Both to his younger self and the younger me. Did I live those moments we got to spend together, did I savor them whole-heartedly? Years from now, I would probably wonder the same about this beautiful warm afternoon together, on Ascension Day 2021. It is one of those questions that always linger and never finds an answer.
When I first learnt about how love alone is not sufficient to see through a healthy development and growth of our children, I realized how little I understood about being a parent and parenthood itself. While love for our children can be interpreted in various manners depending on our upbringing and knowledge, it almost always gets translated into mere provision of the basic needs in forms of safety, food, clothing, roof above and education, and may even be lesser than these for many people, from various stories I came to learn about. While reflecting on my own childhood, this fits perfectly, to a T, the definition of love shown by my parents. I even considered myself a very lucky kid. But why did it still leave a gaping hole in me? When I crossed path with conscious parenting, it gradually revealed to me what I was missing growing up, not because I had no idea all this while, but because I finally was able to comprehend deeper, label my emotions, give meaning to specific scenes and see my experience more clearly in a whole different level. Lo and behold, the missing pieces I found were presence and connection - both things I now vow to give to my son in the best way possible. I do not wish to impose my imperfect childhood onto him, and I just might if I am not conscious enough.
Both presence and connection can be so evasive, in the way how we relate to one other, more so in today's increasingly technology-advanced world. All that children want from their parents are nothing more than to be truly seen and understood. We think we are present with our children, but we rarely are. We constantly get caught up with doing and achieving. We think we are connecting with our children, but we may be fooling ourselves on most parts too. We harp on little mistakes they made or fuss they caused which brought us inconvenience and rush to correct or fix them, just the way our parents used to react to ours. Parents who busy themselves with their smart phones while waiting at playgrounds, pushing baby strollers or eating out together with family, are common sights everywhere. Parents who chastise their children publicly, determine to exude authority and put children in their place, is neither uncommon. Parents who dismiss invitations to play at their children's level and maturity because it does not stimulate or excite them enough, thinking it is such a waste of time, to temporarily leave aside their work or task at hand and join them, potentially have abandoned opportunities to connect with their children in a deeper sense. I believe parents do so not because they want to, nor do they think it is the right thing to do then. For the major part, parents are simply not aware of the subtle and cumulative impact of their inattention or actions can have on the emotional growth and mental health of their children. Unless we start waking up to this, this will be how we perpetuate generations after generations of adults brooding within themselves wounded inner children where self-doubts fester: ......'Am I loved?......Am I enough......Am I worthy?......Do I matter?'...constantly seeking validations from the outside world, not knowing how they have been misled, far away from the gem they already are.
Childhood upbringing will have a huge influence in the becoming of our children. The time we spend with our children will make a big difference in the development of their sense of worth. There is a Chinese saying which goes like this, 'A happy child will use his childhood to heal his lifetime, while an unhappy child will use his lifetime to heal his childhood.' Children will only be children once. The timeframe between being a new parent to becoming empty nesters may seem long, but it is not. As we are busy living our life, we tend to forget that we are mere mortals who do not always get second chances and the time we get to spend with our children are fleeting moments that must be treasured and not taken for granted. I am in no way implying it is always a breeze and undermining the challenging time parents can have with their children, but instead asking to consider the difficult times as a sign to check in with ourselves and how the energy we put out actually contributes to the reality before us. What if our children are simply showing us the way back to reconnecting with ourselves and in so doing, enable us to connect better with them, thus dissolving all conflicts in the process? This shift in perspective by parents when spending time together with their children will be a crucial step towards raising the collective consciousness of our world and creating more peaceful, harmonious and thriving future generations.
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