by Naima Manal

Created on: February 15, 2009   Last Updated: February 16, 2009

Parenting your children, as you were once parented - how can we make an environment of love and safety for them? Reflecting on what made us whole, or broken, from the years that we grew in size, in mind, and in spirit - how do we transcend the depths of who we are, to pull from those experiences, tools for our young? Parenting certainly draws from the core of being what we have become.

Our precious children - how often do we stop and say, I love the fact that this child was given to me, as a lifelong trust and a loyal companion? My children were placed in my hands to nurture and grow. We need to see our children as we once were, reflecting on our past and our happy times, to make a model life of what we want to give our children before the day comes where we see them eye-to-eye, literally.

When I was a child, and in retrospect, my parents and my elder family members really molded my environment to be one so protected, yet so enlightened, that I actually saw the world and its people as a Paradise. Now, we did not have much, but every adult was hard-working and proactive. Whenever someone struggled in the family, the whole family joined together to pull them through. I think both sides of my family had a the most beautiful characteristic that surpasses all statuses and wealth brackets - contentment. My grandparents, my father, my mother, my aunts and uncles, made fun for us from little to nothing.

Coming together for food and family time filled our hearts with joy. Running through the yard, making mud pies and discovering new hiding places and new uses for things the adults used differently (or properly, I should say), all of this was met with a smile from the hearts of my elders.

They took special care to keep the affairs of the adults away from us, so we actually do not know how difficult, or easy, life really was for them. They honored the children of the family with time and space to be children, and they did not leave us to ourselves, to become filled up with unruly behavior and foul speech.

I think the fact that my parents, aunts and uncles are educators, that they always had an educationally-oriented disciplining approach to raising children, but this was an indirect disciplining. You see, they did not have to chase us with physical discipline, rather they approached us with disciplining words that followed the explanations of why something may be a harm for us and the importance of respecting the limits. Now, I must say, we certainly had to have those lessons

• 1
• 2
• 3
• Next Page >>