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Sunday, September 25, 2011

Learning from our mistakes

I believe it's best that we learn for ourselves. I think that it's important for parents to teach as much as we can while our children are younger, yet there comes a time we must let them go and hope we taught well.

Even during the course of teaching, I believe it's important to let kids figure things out for themselves as opposed to correcting them every time they do something we think might not be right.

Some people tend to be more choleric and they tell kids how to do everything. They show kids how to fix everything. Every time their children attempt something that parent shows the right way.

There are forms of government that do this to. They have experts decide what is best force everyone and then force us to do it right. Yet my problem with this is: what if the experts are wrong? What if the parent or the politician is wrong?

If you're deciding what is right all the time, then you must darn well hope you are right. If you are wrong, chaos will ensue. The child (or you) will have a much tougher road than if you had been encouraged to tough it out on your own.

That's one reason why I think it's a good idea not to start kids out with an inheritance, or with a ton of money. We should provide them with a wealth of information and very little money. That way they are forced to live and learn.

I'll tell you from my own personal experience that I wouldn't be who I am today, I would not be here right now doing this, if my parents or my government had provided a blanket for me, or a bridge that I could re-cross for comfort.

And Lord knows I've failed along the way. I was fired more than once. I endured over 18 jobs before I became an RT, and I endured much suffering before I finally got married when I was 32. Yet thanks to that rocky road, I am what I am and I'm happy what I am.

Yet I believe that we don't know any more which way is the right way unless we have the directions sitting right in front of us.

Sure we might have the correct and best way to piece a model together, yet we do not have such blueprints for piecing our lives together. So I believe it's best for our children to be shown the best way, yet there comes a time we must allow them to attempt things on their own.

While they are younger we may need to stop them when they are set on a course for disaster, we might need to help them cross a bridge, yet once they are across the bridge it is best to take the bridge away and let the child learn how to survive. If the bridge is still there, they may be tempted to go back to it to be suckled by the parent.

If the bridge is still there, then that child may not take the risk that might make a difference to the world. Perhaps if Einstein or Thomas Edison had had such a bridge, they never would have taken the risks that make our world what it is. We might also place the founding fathers in this same boat, and any other discoverer or inventor or creator.

I believe it's important to guide my kids, yet then it's time to allow them to discover. It will start with something simple, like making scrambled eggs for breakfast. The choleric parent will never allow this, yet the parent like myself will allow that child to make breakfast even at the risk of getting eggs on the floor, and even at the risk of getting a child's hair in your poached egg.

If you do everything for your child, if you provide cover from all pain, or if you provide money for everything they want to do, then they will become lazy and dependent. If you let them go, you may have to watch them suffer, yet even if they fail they will learn a life's lesson. There's no lesson learned if you do it for them.

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