The most valuable thing a parent can do for children is not to protect them from everything. Children need to face struggles and challenges in order to grow from them. The characteristics developed from enduring the sadness and pain are what will turn children into kind, considerate, wise adults. Parents often feel that if they allow anything to happen to hurt their children that the parents have failed. It is more important to help and support children through the difficult times and guide them towards resiliency. Life is not always safe and fun.
Key Takeaways:
- My greatest fear is that I’ll fail my kids. I agree with Jacqueline Kennedy, who said, “If you bungle raising your children, I don’t think whatever else you do well matters very much.”
- We ate Sunday dinners together, my ex moved into a house seven doors away, and we spoke only kindly of each other. None of that eased what my children were going through.
- Every day I look at him and think, I had one job. It was to protect him from pain, and I couldn’t do it. I feel like such a failure.
“I resigned myself to doing the best I could as the new kind of parent I was: the failing kind.”