Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do… but how much love we put in that action. – Mother Teresa
1) Family Is a Spiritual Experience for Parents and Kids
Success is determined by understanding each other’s roles and trust between the two. Father is wisdom in the face of difficulty. Mother is compassion and love. The combination will form the child’s personality and develop her character.
2) Help to Reveal the Unique Personality
A child is born with her personality written in her life-book. Our goal as parents is to help to open this book and teach our child to read it. We should not in any way try to change its contents. The main secret of this book is that we cannot read it right away. We also need to learn how to do it by gently helping our kids through this process. We see just blank pages at the beginning and only later start noticing some signs and strive to learn this language and understand it fully. We carry unlimited power in our hands and used unwisely it can ruin this book by rewriting it. This happens if you are lazy about learning: “Why learn a new language when I can just write what I think is right? Isn’t that much easier?”
3) Our Kids Do Not Belong to Us
When born, they already have everything of their own. You can trace the strong spirit early on as well as discover gentle softness right away. By trying to be a writer, not a reader, you may ruin the exquisiteness of this book. Eventually, you will lose interest in reading it. Instead, we just need to guide our kids gently on their way by sincerely being willing to know them and admitting the existence of their perfect nature.
4) Acceptance and Respect Are the Fulcrums
Take your child’s hand and start this thought-provoking journey without trying to force or judge. Do not compare – but respect. Harmony in a child’s inner place (the place where she keeps her most sacred soul belongings) is vital. This precious personality that grows in love comes to understand the internal peace within herself. The child in this atmosphere will obtain a firm belief in her importance and will be ready to defend her personality in any circumstances (playground, school, work) not being afraid of ridicule.
5) When the Time Comes, a Child Reveals Her Dreams to an Adult
In most cases this all-knowing, wise individual bitten by the world wants “to protect” the little girl and put her back on the ground first before the cruel world does that less gently: “Wait, my friend, reality will show its sharp teeth to you. You better think about how to finish school and find a good-paying job.”
What are we without dreams? Mere automatons. Dreams make us move, create masterpieces, and make new scientific discoveries that save millions of lives. Dream driven actions make a king from a peasant, and a king without dreams becomes a vagabond. By supporting our kids when they strive for happiness and greatness, we make them believe in the imaginary reality and help them to make it real.
6) Pay Attention to Character Development
Often we do not pay as much attention to our children’s character as we do to teaching them to hold a spoon and eat, to brush their teeth and make their bed by themselves (to free more time for ourselves). Patience is the highest rung on the “child-care ladder”. With this capacity in our hands, we can help our kids to attain up their “dream realized life”.
7) Do Not Force Your Little One to Imitate Anyone
Do not compare him to other children. In striving to imitate, the child becomes like a crow in an old parable. He vainly tries master flying in the skies in an attempt to become a sparrow. As he strives, the little crow forgets how to walk on his own.
8) His Power to Be Himself Should Be Respected
Look at the child in his first year of life. This is his fairy tale, where there is no need to pretend that you like something when you don’t. He is the king of this land, comfortable in the presence of loving, devoted parents and fierce if he doesn’t like someone, even if this someone is the monarch of the neighboring state. This king is brave in everything he does, not afraid of doing something wrong.
His power to be himself should be respected because it brings him peace. Parents as his chaperones on his way through his kingdom should show support and unconditional love: “We love you as you are. You will never make us love you less.” In this land they have discussions and arguments, they have different opinions, listen to each other with respect, learning from their differing points of view, and solving problems together.
9) Answer With Patience and Honesty
When your child asks “what” you should answer with patience and honesty, explaining the “why”. Wise parents know that the explanation should not be misleading as it is hard to correct this mistake and keep the same level of trust afterward.
We should remember to not pressure our kids by instilling in them the behavior that we think is appropriate. The primary emphasis is on playing and making it joyful. Even such a thing as brushing teeth can be fun. And if the question “why should I do it?” is asked, patience and creativity help to make the answer reasonable in a childish way but with a truly grown-up meaning.
10) Your Child Is Entrusted to You
Do not consider your child a source of pleasure for yourself: giving love when you feel like it, and if your mood is blue – considering the child as a mere hindrance on the way to a quiet sleep on the couch.
Conclusion
Listen to the baby’s needs, look for signs of spiritual openness, and pay attention to the dreams communicated in the baby’s language.
Under heaven, all can see beauty as beauty, only because there is ugliness. All can know good as good only because there is evil. Being and nonbeing produce each other. The difficult is born in the easy. Long is defined by short, the high by the low. Before and after go along with each other. – Lao-tzu 2nd Verse of “Tao Te Ching”
1) We Live in a World of Contrasts
This verse from the book of wisdom teaches us about paradoxical existence. We live in a world of contrasts. To understand and appreciate beauty, we need to learn about ugliness. We can see white because we know what black looks like. The truth is born in lies. Pain makes pleasure so alluring.
As a mature parent, you know the harsh and bitter taste of betrayal. You learned about the spiritual agony of a suffering heart and the physical soreness of broken bones. Your desire to protect your child from all the hardships of this world is understandable. Is it possible to put him in the shell of your care and safekeeping? Yes, but this existence is miserable. He won’t be able to recognize genuine friendship and companionship without knowing how disappointment and treachery hurts.
Will he value and cherish his good health unless he knows how bitter the taste of medicine is and how sore is the bruise from a clumsy fall? The minute you are not around anymore… what do you expect him to do? To learn how to clear up the road without ever holding a machete in his hand? Now without your warning and mentorship he’ll cut and bruise his gentle hands severely because they are not used to hard work.
2) Your Mission on This Parenting-Journey
To assist a child, we must provide him with an environment which will enable him to develop freely. – Maria Montessori
Your mission on this parenting-journey is to create an environment of trust and security so that your child feels love in the quantity he needs. Respect his emotions and value his innocence. Never ridicule his pure soul. Show an example of a principle-centered life. Do not think that if you teach him to trust, he may be too naïve when the time comes to stand on his own two feet. He will develop the intuition and sensitivity to read dishonesty if he knows the value of true feelings. Seeing your loving attitude, he will note any trace of betrayal ahead of time.
He will still make mistakes here and there, but they will be few in comparison with the disastrous consequences that could’ve taken place in a different case scenario. Imagine a child growing up in a family where he is scolded and misunderstood. The environment of selfishness and lack of love: where whatever love he gets is controlled and given in small amounts. Later in life he won’t be able to see white and black in people and relationships. He won’t be able to trust his friends or spouse. He will look for a deceitful motive in any person’s actions towards him. He’ll suspect unfaithfulness everywhere. And the pain of it he will taste in full because choosing the right person will be hard.
Without experiencing true love and care, he won’t know if what he’s got is good and worth cherishing. He will see a gaze of humiliation and think it may be a loving one because he saw the same thing coming from the very people he used to trust with his whole heart.
Conclusion
Love is the key. Respect is the door. And happiness in life is the path that this door leads to.
Your assignment in this journey of parenting life exploration is to be a guide, not a guard; to explain the nature of things, good and bad, not hide their existence. Do not try to clear the road but predict the stony ground or the dark path through a forest full of dangers and prepare him, equip him with the right gear for the hard trip.
My mom shaped our delicate souls with unconditional love
The snow was deep, the morning was happy, and the planned activity for the day was the most cheerful. A nearby forest was a place for kids’ games and enchanted stories about hidden treasures. The kids from the entire village gathered their sleds, skis, and simple hunks of plastic (those were the best things to sled down the main hill) and met at the designated place.
I put on my best coat. That white-pinkish fake fur made me look like a tiny cloud of thick mist on skinny legs — and taking my makeshift sledding gear, I ran to meet my friends. We had a blast! My face was red, my lips chapped, and my eyes watered from the frosty air, happy shouting and too much laughing.
When I came home at last, much later than my mom allowed me, I looked like a drenched grey mouse. My lovely fur turned into a dirty wet mass. The look on my mother’s face said more than words could. But she composed herself, closed her eyes, and sighed with a soft smile on her lips.
I understood fully her words many years after. At that time, they only meant that she was not cross with me, “You know I love you, cutie pie. Life is a collection of happy moments, so let us have another one together. I will make your favorite pancakes. How about that?”
My sister and I were sitting at our small square solid-wood dining table covered with a sunflower tablecloth. My mom always made our house look like one of Stephen Darbishire’s summer paintings. We had color sprinkled in each room: handmade pillows, embroidered pictures, and lacy doilies on every surface.
I spilled my tea, dotted the space around my teacup with sugar, and put the cuff of my shirt in jam with no reproachful comments from neither my mom nor my sister. The green tea with ginger, lemon, and honey was my mother’s masterpiece. Accompanied by hot pancakes, straight from the pan, it was the greatest luxury of my childhood. I needed to possess a remarkable skill to finish the previous round and soft delicacy in time to stretch my hand for a new hot one before my sister did. It was a fun little competition. Even nowadays we play this game mostly to amuse each other and to make our mom laugh heartily.
My mother knew the power of unconditional love as a parent and chose to show it in three main ways. We can use these in our parenting too:
Choose happy moments to outline life.
To an outsider’s scrupulous eye, it might have been a sad life of many losses, but she decided otherwise. We lost our father when I was three years old, and my mom was only twenty-eight. We were her salvation. Her nature was overly sensitive to every little prick in our humble family life. She shaped our delicate souls with a dominant spirit of unconditional love, and it showed us the path to happiness.
Allow them to experiment and explore.
We attain knowledge by trial and failure, touch, and pain. My mom knew that it was necessary to have something to regret about. There is no freedom in a house in constant order with kids in a state of never broken obedience. Wild tunes should have their place in every family symphony.
The world around us is alive, ruddy, and satisfying only if we are allowed to make mistakes without fear. Being a living embodiment of love, trust, and understanding, she always thought about the consoling things to say when she saw the sparks of tears in our eyes.
Make every moment special.
What to use as a measuring scale when you define life is solely a personal choice. There is a multitude of feelings, countless moments, numerous meetings, hopefully, plentiful impressions — everything has its own emotional shade. The good news is we can choose the colors to paint our life.
We are all composed of the fragments of our various experiences. Being a parent myself, I know it is in my power to make most of these personality-building-moments bright, colorful, and happy for my children.
Here is a conundrum indeed! How soon can you solve it?
Olya Aman
My object in parading this private affair before the reader is to commemorate the remarkable series of events and convey the evidence of what love can build and what it can destroy. – Olya Aman
I present to you here a true story with written evidence that came to my possession through the hands and words of the primary witnesses, who happen to be my friends. I intend to preserve everybody’s incognito in this tale, so let me reveal no names, no places.
Imagine a tiny town where everybody knows each other. If you think this place quiet and unremarkable, you cannot be farther from the truth. People here invent the most mysterious crime affairs to amuse themselves. The outcome of this tale proved to be the zenith of one family’s happiness and, hopefully, the nadir of their troubles.
Mother
I was asked to exaggerate nothing and suppress nothing from what happened more than thirty years ago. My imagination tends to people the darkness of those days with additional terrors sometimes. I’ll do my best to restrain from it.
I used to be a night-club, knock-about-city young girl who was determined to teach herself a lesson by marrying a simple police officer and moving to the smallest town ever existent. After the hubbub and bustle of a big city, I hoped to find soul-soothing serenity in the three-story walls of ancient buildings, corner grocery shops, wooden benches close to every threshold, and the grand loving eyes of my man.
Calm and quiet were showering upon me thick and fast. The monotony of my existence started to grind me away soon enough. I managed to hold the rapture of boredom and adventure starvation for the first three years, and the three that followed were hell for both of us indeed. My husband should have known better than marrying a woman like me.
We were living in constant gnawing anxiety. The real reason for my unhappiness was in my allusion to pain. I was sure that my relationship was lacking the spark. I was longing for emotional suffering and physical agony. It seemed to me that only torture could make me feel alive. The grim orchestra in my head was playing about the passion I lacked and the pain I craved. My tumultuous thoughts were driving me nuts.
I droned my days away in that gloomy town. Household chores: cooking, cleaning, a little bit of reading, and dreaming about some other man beside me, some different life endured. I should have found something to do in that dreary place. But what could I find with my political science degree? Too sophisticated for that place I was.
Oddly enough, only fear still kept us together. My husband, I suspected, feared loneliness and to set everyone’s tongue wagging about our private affairs. I feared my son rejecting me for breaking the family and my inner desire to inflict pain on myself and my husband. Trouble was brewing; I was asking for it.
I anticipated some unfortunate event for some weeks before that day. It started as always with a silent breakfast. Both my husband and I were tired of keeping the picture of a happy family for the sake of our six-year-old son. Mind you, we never as much as raised voice to each other. We simply didn’t talk but for hateful ‘good morning’ and ‘have a good day’.
My husband made his lunch, put a few apples in a bag for our son to take to his grandma, and both of them were gone with the usual ‘see you tonight’. At half-past six, my husband came home. I warmed up his dinner and said, “I will call your mom and ask if they are home by now? I will pick him up and take him to his karate class at seven-thirty.”
I picked the phone and dialed the number. Our son was not there. His mom thought we had some other thing scheduled. My husband grabbed the receiver from my shaking hand and pushed me gently aside. “It’s ok,” he said to his mother. He told her we forgot about some other arrangement and that he was at his friend’s place. What was he talking about? What friend? What kind of arrangement? Those questions were whirling in my head.
This done, my husband looked at me in a strange way. The intensity of his gaze silenced me. It was a look of a hungry, watchful reproach. “I’ll find him. Don’t you worry,” he said, picked up his jacket, and was gone.
Father
My family was always unspeakably precious to me. There was nothing I couldn’t do to save it. Bare it in mind while reading this narrative of mine. I loved my wife more than anything. I knew from the very beginning, she was not the woman a simple chap like me could catch and hold still in his hands. She needed drama, and drama was a rare coin in my native town. I had to mind that currency myself.
It was a custom with us to take our son to my mother’s place, so my wife had a day to herself. She said she needed that time alone, and I submitted. I seldom could say ‘no’ to anything she wanted. I usually drove to the parking lot of a three-story apartment building where my mother lived.
Our son used to get out of the car, give me his ‘see you later, dad’, enter the building and his grandma’s flat on the second floor all by himself. This brief trip gave him a sense of maturity, something to add to his list of ‘I can’.
What was wrong this time? Why wasn’t he at his usual place?
When home again, I said to my wife that I knocked at each and every door of this building, asking about our boy. No one as much as saw him that day. She blamed me, and I, half-expecting such reaction, didn’t object.
She was out of all sorts, now saying in her querulous, rattling whisper how she missed her son, now flinging distinct words of hatred into the air, now shedding a gust of tears and scratching her face, now heaving convulsively barely able to talk, imploring me to do something.
That was her niche in life, her long-awaited drama. So much feeling in every gesture — that was my beastly little girl again. I had to slap her on the face to bring her back to senses.
What an outcome from this insult! I never as much as raised a thought against a woman not talking about a hand. She caught my hand and pressed it to her burning cheek. She kissed it, then higher. My arm, shoulder, collarbone, ear lobe — what an electric shock was going through every little cell of my body! It had ceased to be my own.
The desire we both felt expanded into a series of scenes with pain and pleasure united, angry kisses, throwing each other against all surfaces. Bruising her flesh, she was getting the unsettling inner feeling out, releasing her emotional distress. When all was over, she was lying on a couch in dreamless slumber. I went out into the night to look for our son.
Grandmother
My old, cast-away husband was out of our lives for twenty years. He left us when our son was twelve. Not that he planned it. They sentenced him to three years for a drunken scuffle in a local bar. One man almost died from the severe beating my husband was to blame for. He got out of jail and out of our lives.
On our son’s thirty-second birthday, the old beggar brought his shaking frame to my flat and pleaded to have a chat with his son. I was beside myself with indignation, to say the least. I hated my husband for leaving us. Over a year, he was patiently asking for permission to be a part of our family.
My son and I agreed to see him now and then, with one condition, he had to keep it a secret. My son didn’t mention it to his wife. I never openly met him outside. Were we ashamed of him? He WAS a dosser, after all. Or were we punishing him in this way? I don’t know for sure.
I was angry with myself for being silly and liking, I couldn’t admit at the time, but LOVING was the right word, my husband, during all those years he was away. I couldn’t shake off the inveterate distrust which weighed for all those years on my spirits.
That is why when this alien and strangely familiar person asked to see his grandson, I could only stand rooted in the ‘No’ and ‘Never’. It was a very trying time for me. Eventually, he had tamed me. One day my son and I submitted to his pleadings and promised to arrange everything.
Grandfather
I was old and sick and tired of my lonely life. I had reasons of my own to leave my family. The rods of iron with which prison surrounded me were ever-present in my mind. At some point, I felt that my life was at its lowest ebb. Then and there, like a pitiful mongrel, I crept back meekly to my family. For the first time in my entire life, I humbled myself to pleading for forgiveness with all the patience I still had left in me.
I went to my old hut near the lake. I used to go there in the glorious old days when fishing. This shabby place was creepy, just as I was at that stage of my life. But still, those walls were much better than any bench I used to call home. For over a year, I waited for my wife and son to soften for me. I didn’t put my mind in total blank with the drink. I abandoned this degrading habit because I knew it could force me to lose every inch of the ground I had gained.
The day my son patted me on the shoulder and promised to let me see my grandson, my heart gave a great bound. This news almost turned me giddy. The thought half maddened me with delight. I spent the following couple of days getting ready, putting things in order at my lonely cabin. The little chap needed a cozy place to stay. I exhausted myself with plans for the future rendezvous with my boy. I knew just then — I’d lived through all misfortunes to see my grandson, to get things straight with my son, and to pray for my wife’s forgiveness.
I didn’t remember myself being as tender-hearted as at the moment my son brought this boy in his car on that day. I was fool enough to shed a couple of tears. I wanted to wipe away the wrongs my family suffered through with this last effort of submissive affection. All the gold left of my wasted nature, I poured at the feet of my grandson. I keep the memory of those two days in my heart of hearts.
Son
The air was close and stagnant in that hut. This old man was kind but rude, and he looked almost cruel. I liked him right away, though. How can it be is clean past my comprehension even now, thirty years since? He said, “Don’t middley-coddley, there a good boy. Nothing to be worried about. We’ll have a rattling good time fishing.” The old man said I could call him grandpa, and I did. I knew by my childish instinct, that was seldom wrong, he was my friend.
I remember as if it was yesterday that I never felt myself so mature, so bold and courageous, so skilled and manly. I stayed with this wrinkled weather and life beaten person for two long and memorable days. What a blast! Running in the fields, making birdhouses, playing with the shabby little dog, fishing, and cooking our fish soup over a riverside fire.
My father came with the haste of happiness in his feet in the evening of the second day. I haven’t seen him like that before. I was happy to see this change, and perhaps a little piqued too.
Mother
My husband could not sit down alone to wait through the crisis of our life. He left the house that night after we had the most sensual experience. He remembered that he was leaving an anxious heart at home and phoned me a few times, updating me on the progress of his search. He called me tender names, and I didn’t humor him as I used to.
On the second day in the early evening hours, he came home. I met him with my entire being, imploring for some uplifting news. He didn’t have any. Then I gave him a defiant look, and with mockery, I eagerly blamed him again for what had happened. I should have gone to look for my boy myself. Why did he persuade me to stay at home and wait for some developments? Oh, how my heart sank under a dread. It was beyond words.
Then he confessed. He said he didn’t plan it. We barely exchanged a few words those days, and he simply forgot to tell me he’d arranged for our son to spend a day with his grandfather. I didn’t even know the man existed. My husband never mentioned him. I assumed his father was dead. When he came home and saw my worried look when I was talking on the phone with his mother, only then he felt a plan forming itself in his brain.
He wanted to enliven my love for many years now. He didn’t know how to shake that lethargy I seemed to live in. He said that the pretense of searching for his son, the common disaster he invented, the tears and worries that both of us shared for almost two days brought us together. We were a family, at last, a mother and a father struggling to find their son.
Oh, how mad with rage I was. I called him nasty names. I was storming through our house, smashing the furniture. But in the midst of all those turbulent feelings, there was a glow of hope in me. Hang it all; he was right. I deserved the shock and shake I’d got. I was alive with burning emotions. I breathed passion in the air.
The strange march of events during those two days changed the course of our lives forever. Happy life ever after? Oh, by Heaven, no. But eventful, for sure. We made it a rule always to break the monotony and to meet our passion half-way. When our boy enjoyed time with his grandparents, we had our hurry-skurry adventures. I used to tell him, “Remember it doubly and trebly to make me FEEL your love.”
Olya Aman 