FAMILYthing
A Facebook Post
Previously, my wife shared a facebook post with me. A mother had posted that she was dissatisfied with the way her child’s preschool teacher “publicly” commented in the preschool whatsapp group that her son did not complete his homework. The mother was upset because the teacher had done this a few times in the group which could be publicly read by all the other mothers in the group. The upset mother commented that she was a fulltime working mother and does not have the time to follow up on her child’s homework from school. She stated that it was the teachers’ job to make sure that her child completes the homework instead of “complaining” to the parent that it is not done.
Let’s pause for a while and think about a few things: Was the mother wrong in her post about teachers? What actually is the role of a teacher in a child’s education? What are the parents’ roles in their child’s education? If a parent wasn’t a fulltime working mother, is his/her role any different from a fulltime working mother?
Journey to the Results
If you are a working adult, then you are familiar with the term “outsourcing”. Most of us may not have the luxury to cook at home, so we eat out. We have outsourced that part of our lives. If we desire a better meal, we would opt for a more expensive restaurant. Similarly, most of us need to work, so we have “outsourced” our children to schools and learning centres, in hopes that they would educate our children like “how we would”. And when we want “better kids”, we would naturally opt for that school that only accepts 50 kids annually.
In our minds, we expect to “receive” smart, polite and top class children when we drive them back from school. We expect perfectly disciplined, well-mannered, self-taught kids who pick up after themselves at home. They should score all A’s for no matter what subjects they take, on top of their already excellent social skills and extra-curricular activities.
I think I have gone far enough to let you see how ludicrous the notion sounds, don’t you think? But why is it that we still have that kind of expectation in us? It is because we are used to the concept of “outsourcing” in our work lives. In outsourcing, people generally just want the RESULTS and could not care less about the process or journey. You could even go a step further to say we would do whatever is necessary to get the results we want, no matter how ludicrous it may seem because the ends justify the means.
Learning and Growing
“Growing pains” is a term that most of us are familiar with. Nobody likes the pain, but it is what it takes for us to truly grow. Unfortunately, our kids’ growing pains are shared with the parents as well. Sometimes, parents get angry because the children don’t seem to know they are even in pain. I have a 4 and 1-year old, so I have my shares of my son blaming me for his lost toy when I didn’t even touch it. How I hope that he would grow up and understand that it is his toy and his responsibility to take care of it.
Due to the high demand and pressure of our work, coupled with the lightning fast demands and comments of Facebook, Whatsapp and other social media, our lives have become increasingly full of stress until we “have no time” for our children’s “nuisance.” But what we all must realise is that our children are the “nuisance” is what we signed up for as parents and there is no way around it. If any other things should cause us to lose focus as parents, then we should come to God and seek His wisdom.
A project manager is one who thinks that he can have a baby a month if he had 9 wives. Let us all not think like that and come to terms with the fact as parents, it is our responsibility to grow and learn with our children because God made us their parents and no others are better suited taking up this job.