Parenting is an ongoing battle between mind and heart of the parent. What is the best way to raise the children? To make the children do house chores or not? To spoil the children with gifts and freebies as House helps do the work or not? To balance the tasks at home or not?
Whoever uses the heart to guide the young ones, is most likely to win and make a great parent.
For that reason, uneducated parents make great parents as well just like their educated counterparts— parenting with a heart is the equalizer.
The winner is always someone able to help the children have self drive to push themselves to excel in what ever they put their eyes, minds and hearts on.
Parenting is like schooling. According to Wikipedia, ‘parenting is process of promoting and supporting the physical, emotional, social, and intellectual development of a child from infancy to adulthood’.
I look at parenting as preparing the children to pass the life exam that starts at about age 16, or you may say at the legal age of 18 in Uganda, until the person dies. Whereas schools give ongoing exams every year to assess the children’s ability to progress to the next class, so as to keep them focused, the life exam is different.
You need to make the children to have the right attitude to win amid unfair world full of challenges at every corner, year after year. We say a positive attitude is the best motivation. A negative or bad attitude is the worst disease. What is your attitude. How do you react to what happens to your or how others treat you?
Do you sit down and bemoan your date. Or you use it as motivation to work harder?
What is the measure of great parenting?
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- A good pilot is one who flies so many miles without accidents or incidents.
- A good lawyer is one who wins several cases despite how bad they appear in terms of facts, against their side
- A good engineer is one whose structures lasts for years and years last the pyramids.
So, who is a good parent?
What one thing would help define and summarize a good parent.
I would say that great parenting is when the children are able to stand on their own, and win in their chosen careers without having to bother their parents with support or help. Parents are happy when their children are able to live decent lives, make social or community impact and live longer.
Success is a moving target and no one success is ideal.
Back to you:
What does good parenting mean to you? How would you measure your children as having succeeded?
Copyright Mustapha B Mugisa, 2020. All rights reserved.
