I was just reading cjane, and in honor of April being Autism Awareness Month, her neighbor and friend, Catherine Parry, wrote a guest post about parenting her son, Will. It is a great post, and this particular line struck me as a terrific nugget of parental wisdom, special needs children or not:
"The longer we have been parents, the more we have learned to distrust our motives for responding sharply if Will melted down in public, or for demanding obedience just because we said so. Will’s most challenging task may be training us to act in his best interest, without worrying about how our decisions affect our parental image."
How often do we let our "parental egos" get in the way of our being the parents our children need us to be? Both in the big and small things?
I'm going to be chewing on that one the rest of the day. Would love to hear your thoughts...
3 comments:
Thanks, I needed that today. I was pretty busy beating myself up yesterday about what a bad parent I am and not asking what I'm doing wrong but what I'm doing right. It seems like not much some days. I will start asking myself if I'm being the parent my child needs me to be.
Thanks for the thought provoking quote. I didn't really catch that when I read cjane's post the first time around. I think we all fall into parenting ego traps.
Sure makes me think about what kind of parent my kiddos need me to be.
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