The Two Paths of Parenting

If we want our children to fly, we have to be more courageous as parents and take the less trodden path.

When I first became a parent, I wanted to know what to do and this need to know and be certain meant I tried to learn from everyone – my parents, my family, my in-laws, my friends, the experts via their books, the NCT, health visitors, teachers etc.  I was thirsty for knowledge and I gained a lot of it, but  of course there was one BIG problem – they didn’t know the potential or either me or my child. Their advice only covered part of the jigsaw. The rest can only be figured out by me and my unique children. 

In every moment , we feel pulled as parents to take the well trodden path and stay on it. We learn from the mistakes and success stories of our past and our family and friends past and try our best not to repeat them. This path feels safe, it’s what everyone expects and if it doesn’t work, no-one will blame us, it won’t be our fault.We try our best to make the well trodden path fit our circumstances and feel exhausted and overwhelmed when it doesn’t!

To stop and wonder about what we don’t know about ourselves and our children takes courage – and yet it is this courageous path that will help both them and us learn to fly. 

It’s courageous because we don’t know whether it will work – we have no idea how it will all turn out in the future. Our only way of knowing is to practice tuning in to our inner wisdom and asking ourselves at each turn – will this help them fly or stop them flying? We can’t see too far ahead, we have to be patient and let the path unfold as we walk. 

Of course there will be many times when we can’t always hear our own wisdom, so we take wrong turns and make mistakes and yet I have been learning recently that it is in these moments, our most vulnerable moments, when we get it wrong, that our children are most likely to learn how to fly.

If you knew that your children will learn just as much or more from your mistakes as they will from the stuff you get right, what would you do differently?