“Not only do adults avoid disciplining the children of others, they often don’t even discipline their own. They lack confidence in their authority as parents. The children pay a terrible price for this failing because, without authority, adults cannot give children what they need. Love is not enough. Children lack the experience and perspective to deal with the world around them. The role of the parent is to guide children by actively setting limits and teaching them to restrain themselves. Without a strong inner sense of authority, this job is impossible. Children feel you more than they listen to you. They do not decide to accept what you tell them because it makes logical sense. They accept it only because they feel your authority in a positive way. If children do not sense that you are stronger than they are, you are useless to them as a parent. You have not prepared them to deal with reality and in that sense you have failed them.”
– Phil Stutz, Lessons for Living
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“But it’s just the fact that if we as parents don’t teach our kids structure, responsibility, they’re gonna be lost. It’s like them being in a country full of anarchism. There’s no control, they do whatever they want, and so on.
And so as kids, they need that. Because when they get out in the real world, that you’re going to be so disappointed, they’re going to be crushed, because somebody is going to tell them the same stuff that we as parents should have taught them when they were kids.
Yeah. And it’s gonna crush him. It’s gonna crush him. So I’d rather prepare my kids now, right, than wait until they become 20 or 21 years old and someone rips them a new one verbally at work because they didn’t do what they supposed to.”
– Bo Jackson, on The Forward Podcast, 12 December 2016
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To be a better parent isn’t about doing more for our children, it’s about showing what enough looks like.
Those of us who didn’t receive that structure in our own childhoods struggle to catch up.
Our inner anarchy causes great turbulence.
Isn’t it better to get something right the first time round?
If we are going to build a house, it needs a strong foundation, solid walls and a roof that doesn’t leak.
We don’t want to have to keep patching leaks and bracing the cracks.
Children need firm foundations.
We, as parents, are responsible for building the initial structure.
If we make mistakes we cannot go back to correct them.
It’s too late. Our children are forced to do that alone.
Are we going to force our children to weather the storms of life in a leaky shack?
Or, through our strength, integrity and high expectations shall we construct something durable.
We have these precious years to do the good work as parents.
The question though is how do we know what good workmanship looks like when we ourselves reside in such fragile abodes?
Conversations With Quotations 