I often hear some parents boasting pompously that the reason why they struggle so hard to get to where they are today is simply because their children wouldn’t have to pass through what they went through.
Such parents quickly forget that the main reason why they have a stable life today is simply because of what they went through. Bruce Lee once said: “Instead of buying your children all the things you never had, you should teach them all the things you were never taught. Material wears out but knowledge stays”.
Each child has challenges and hindrances that are peculiar to his/her destination. What they are going through is linked to where they are going to. Parents should stop helping their children to ‘buy’ their way to the top. It is inimical to their destiny fulfilment.
We must allow our children to fully live and experience life. We must stop short-circuiting the growth of our children by ‘helping’ them skip due processes. It is a recipe for raising emotionally stunted and non-functional adults. The world is not waiting for over-pampered children, the world is waiting for functional and responsible adults.
There is a particular illustration that I would like to use to drive home some salient points. The story and struggle of the emerging chick validates the fact that some experiences and struggles are needed to stabilize us for the future. It takes 21 days to hatch a chicken egg under the normal condition. At a minimum of three times a day, the egg must be gently turned or ‘rotated’ to prevent the developing embryo from sticking to the inside of the egg using an instrument called incubator, but the mother hen does this same job in nature very well.
The mother hen provides the necessary temperature, feeds the feeble chicks and prevents them from predators. But for the chicks, every hatching process is meant to be a form of internal struggle to prepare them towards an uncertain future. The truth is that the length of our external life is determined by the depth of our internal struggle.
When the baby chick is ready to hatch, it is suicidal to assist. The first efforts to free itself are crucial to the chicken’s life cycle and it will die if we interfere in this mysterious process responsible for developing survival instincts. The internal struggle is ‘divinely’ regulated in such a way that only the strongest chicks will survive it and even if we help the weak chicks to hatch, we are exposing them to a future that they’ve not been equipped to handle.
A great lesson to be learnt is that, there are some things we go through in life that are needed for our preservation. Every stage of our life is needed to face a greater adversity in the future; without our internal struggle we become endangered species. Internal struggle ensures external stability. It has been emphasized that the parent hen is responsible for providing an enabling environment to help the egg to hatch – through supplying warmth to the eggs, feeding the young chicks and protecting them from predators. But the hatching of eggs is solely the responsibility of the ‘emerging’ chick.
There are some adversities that come to fortify us towards a more dangerous “unseen”. The best way to help children out of future misery is to allow them pass through present challenges. Helping children is good but it must be timely and with godly wisdom. Great parents don’t do things for their children; they do things with their children. Sometimes we abuse our children when we do for them the things that they ought to have been prepared to do for themselves. Some parents go the extra mile to think for their children. When parents think for their children, they destroy the future ability of their wards to think independently of them.
Parents are meant to reason together with their children and not reason for them, even the Almighty God said in Isaiah 1:18, “Come now, and let us reason together.” The story taught us in a great way that we must not pamper or tamper with the process of our children’s evolution and development. For the chick, it is simply 21 days of struggle but a lifetime of bliss!
We must allow our children to fully live and experience life. We must prepare them emotionally to live independently. Refusal to create a platform for their independence may cause them to cling to unsecure “anchors” that are detrimental to their future. Parents must nurture the capacity of their wards to reach emotional equilibrium in the face of unanticipated change, unexpected disappointment and other life’s adversities. This would develop their sense of responsibility and ability to manage risks. We need more critical thinkers not mechanised robots.
Parents must be mature enough to expose their children to life situations that will shape them for the future. A smooth sea never made a skilful sailor. Every problem introduces a person to himself. Parents who tend to dominate their children’s choices eventually produce obedient but dependent children. We must encourage decision-making from an early age. We must subtly expose them to the risk of choices and consequences in life.
Parents must systematically design their “exit plan” from the lives of their children. We must face the blatant truth that we will not always be there for them. We must train them to think independently of us and to see opportunities in the midst of life’s challenges. Winston Churchill said, “Difficulties mastered are opportunity won”.
