It breaks our heart, makes us feel bad, and wants to kill the motherfucker responsible for it! All we want to do is to hug and protect ‘em from the mean and cruel world until they’re adults.
I remember one time too many my mom recites
to me: “Be smart and don’t repeat my mistakes!” something I now recite to my
kids – looking back on my life I’ll be happy to spare them some really nasty
shit I went through when I was little…
But are we really doing our children a favor
by protecting them and saving them from “bad” experiences and “our” mistakes?
I say – NOT!
Not
much changed from the time we became who we are, accept maybe we got fatter and
lazier, but we still learn the way our ancestors did – EXPERIENCE.
Our brain
still works at this primitive level of:
good experience – keep and repeat, a bad experience – avoid and proceed.
I simplify this on purpose since we all know
it and further discussion about the biochemistry and behavioral mechanics of our
brain is out of the scope of this article.
Experience in the early stages of child development
is crucial for the kids since tasting, touching, and trying everything for the
solemn purpose of learning and discovering, is the only way for them to
understand the world we brought them into.
Did you know that by the age of eight every
child experience all the emotional spectrum – hate, love, fear, frustration,
joy, etc…
By the way, the best metabolic workout I
know is chasing your kids around constantly aware of any shit they might be
putting in their mouth or laying their hand on…
For that same reason of discovery, nature
made their bodies so soft and “Wolverine” recoverable when they’re little! As
much as it hurts seeing a 6 years old kid with an arm cast, he’ll forget about
it in no time and will be back good as new but if the same thing happens to the
60 years old….
We are all aware of (especially in our field)
how dangerous injuries are, especially when we’re old(er) and how much time it would take to recover from it, and with GOD’s help, we’ll be back 100%...
And yet, as parents, we tend to pet and keep
our kids in a “safe zone” most of the time. When I’m hanging out with my kids
(which I try to do as often as my schedule allows it) I watch mommies and
daddies bitch around their kids: “don’t climb, don’t run, don’t touch, don’t
jump, and don’t take your shirt off…” – mind you, we’re at the Play Yard!
What do you expect your kids to do on a playground – quietly feed pigeons, play chess and solve Fermat’s Last Theorem?!...
The funny thing is that those exact people
later tell stories and share posts on FB about how wonderful the childhood
was when they were little - without PC’s and TV’s but with a lot of fresh
air and outdoors, moreover most of us bare stories about almost being killed or
injured on some occasion as kids and we just love telling them and here’s a
punch – WHY?
The answer is simple – wanna guess? Correct:
THE EXPERIENCE!
I’ll always remember an episode when I
studied Theatre Art and Directing, our teacher entered a studio and said something that played a huge
role in my later development and keep doing so until this very day:
“You, young people, came here
to learn from me and pay me money not because I’m richer, prettier, smarter, or
more connected than you are. Every one of you can easily beat me in every one
of these fields, all except one – I AM MORE EXPERIENCED than you are because
I’m in this industry for 30 years…”
We love to share such stories with others
because the more experience you have the higher social and professional status
you get!
Answer me this: on a subject of strength
training, whose advice you’ll likely to follow mine (with all due respect to
myself) or Charles Poliquin’s RIP, Lui Simmons or Jim
Wendler’s and that’s just a
few who crossed my mind?..
-
I rest my case.
So why are we preventing from our children
the thing that made us who we are? Why are we so overprotective? Why do we
think that they are so fragile?
Please
note, I’m not advocating sending our kids to hardcore prison, feeding them
leftovers, making them sleep outside (actually not a bad idea – they won’t cough
ever again…), or abusing them just to forge them!
Children are Superman in comparison to us
(adults), they are much stronger than we give him credit for! Think about it –
they can put some nasty stuff in their mouth and their digestive system just
fine, they fall, bang their head, twist their body and limbs in rather than
peculiar ways without straining, dislocating, and breaking anything and
unfortunately, too often, they hold in their little and gentle hands, mommy and
daddy from divorcing….
Don’t let their size and innocent face full
you, they are stronger than we ever are, no matter how hard we lift!
As for protecting our kids from making our
own mistakes - I am sorry but your children AREN’T YOU! They are the product of
your sperm and their mother's ovum, but they are not you by simply not being
raised like you, living like you, having your environment and social
surrounding - they just don’t have YOUR experience!
Being raised through the reflection of our
own past, makes our kids a better version of us thus, by merely “making” them,
we already “saved” them from our own past!
Ponder for a second by going back and
comparing yourself to your own folks – with all the similarities you’re NOT
them and your parents, in their turn, are NOT theirs!
It’s what I call a “Spiral of Life”
although, in circles, it always goes up and evolving.
One thing we got right though - the world is
a cruel and nasty place! It’s a jungle out there and the law of the survival of
the fittest always has and will be the primal force of evolution!
With this being said, what do you think our
job as parents is: to protect our children from the world outside or to prepare
them for it in the best way we can?!
I say, our job is to raise tough and strong
motherfuckers who will dominate their life and faith rather than being led as “sheep
to a slaughter”!
Let these little bastards run, jump, bang,
lift, taste, climb, swing, and do other crazy shit they want (as long as there’s
no life threat in their actions), let them build their own toolbox of
experiences, and believe me our presence and influence will leave their mark on
them so there is no need to force it – just act and be that person you want
them to in the future and everything will be alright!
So next time you are ready before you pet and protect, wait for a second – there’s a good chance that the tears of a child are a smile of an adult…
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