What makes a person "wise"? In my own personal belief, wisdom comes from knowledge, and experience. If you are looking for advice, what do you do? You look for someone who has been there, and done that, correct? You summon the answers by where you look, and who you ask... Well, sometimes, there are questions that seem to have no answers! So what do you do then? (You INVESTIGATE...!) What about those answers that just "come to you" out of nowhere? Do you trust your instict? Or do you blow it off? It depends on the question, right? It all depends on common sense, and what we are taught as children.
If a child is raised with un-opinionated parents, then the child is going to grow up un-opinionated! If the child lives with a parent who can't stop learning, then more than likely, the child will continue to learn, also. Like an infant who is not touched, is not loved, or caressed, the infant will eventually cease to live altogether.
As a mother of four very different, and very special children, I have learned that I must, (as a mother) continue to teach my children that learning is good for the soul. Learning is living. Learning is the start to a very comfortable life. Everyday, you honestly DO learn something new, whether it be as simple as making toast, or as complex as learning the orbits of the planets. I want my children to learn as much as possible, ABOUT as much as possible. I want them to have a good future, and have all the knowledge they need. I want my kids to build their own challenges. Something they have to work for, and desire to accomplish. I want them to NEVER set goals... because I want them pushing further than that! Am I setting their expectations too high? I doubt it. My kids are smart, and they will continue being smart by their own choice.
Our children learn from us right from the beginning of their lives. From the moment they are born, they have instincts. They know who their mother is, just because they have heard her voice for months before their birth. Childrens' brains are like a sponge. It absorbs everything. After being absorbed, the knowledge stays with them forever, just stored in different parts of their brains for use later on in life. We, as parents, sometimes forget that part... Children remember things we don't expect them to remember. (Do you remember your childhood?)If it is something traumatic, it leaves an imprint, and is never forgotton, just buried, to someday be dug up by another similar unforseen traumatic experience. We, as parents, gave birth to our children for a reason. To bring them to life... To raise them as we wanted to be raised, not as we were raised. We take our regrets, and turn them around, so our children don't have the same regrets. If our childhood was abusive, we try our hardest to make sure theirs in NOT... If we were poor, we try our hardest to make sure our children have things that we, as children, did not have. It's all trial and error. We learn as they do, just in a more advanced way.
Why, then, do we continue to worry if we are good parents, or not? Out of experience, I have made choices that I regret... BUT, I have chose to learn from those mistakes, and I have voiced those mistakes to my children, to make them better understand why I don't want them making the same mistakes... When my children make comments like, "What possibly would've made you do something like that?"... I tell them, "It was a bad choice, BECAUSE..." and I proceed in telling them what my opinion is, and why I know they will not do the same thing. It helps them move onto the next step- learning from me...
It is true, that even though we believe that we have made something clear to our children, they still may make a bad choice. But this is because they need the "experience" part. All-in-all, they will do whatever they think is right at the moment, and learn from it, just as we did as kids. It's a process we have all been through, and will never stop doing. It's learning.
We get upset when our kids make bad choices because we thought we taught them better. Truth being, they need to experience right from wrong in order to learn the difference. Us, as parents, can't expect to have "the perfect child". There is no such thing... We must love our children with all of our hearts, whether they do right or wrong. It's called unconditional love. A parent cannot hate their child, because they are their child, just as a child cannot hate their parent.
A child, (or parent, for thet fact,) can, and are deserving of having ill feelings toward one another. The point is, is we are learning from it. We must accept the fact that we are only doing what we can at the moment. To ask otherwise, is to ask the impossible. The word "forgiveness" comes after learning the truth. If one feels they cannot forgive another, then all it tkes is more time, and more knowledge in the situation... Maybe even some time spent alone. Forgiveness comes at the end of a lesson learned. And this is evident in all situations, and relationships.
Sometimes, a person has to be alone with oneself, in order to become reaquainted with themselves. To be able to come to a comfortable medium with yourself, is the hardest thing to do when you feel that you have done something wrong. You must believe within yourself, that nothing you do or say has no meaning. Everything that happens, happens for a reson. That turn you took at the intersection, which is not your usual route, was done for a reason. Maybe there is a car accident waiting to happen, that you just detoured, without even realizing it... It's instinct. Nothing to worry about, it happens every day. To me, there is no such thing as "coincidence"... It's all in sharp instinct...
Learning is part of the process of life. Just as death is a process of life. It's a never-ending cycle. Something we must not fear. Just as an infant shows no fear to anything until they see the reaction of an adult. What is there to be scared of? They don't know until they learn. A child learns fear from their parents. An example is a mother who is deathly afraid of spiders... A child is not scared of a spider until they see their mom jumping up, and screaming when she sees it! Then, the child learns the reaction, and mimics her, and learns that the spider is something to be afraid of...! Where as if the mother isn't afraid of the spider, she would more than likely shove the spider out the door, and let it live, rather than squash it. Which, in turn, teaches the child to do the same thing...to respect the spider as a living creature of our earth.
We must stop and think before reacting in front of our children. We've got to learn before we can teach. Once we are comfortable with our own life, then we can continue being comfortable with teaching our children the basics of life...
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