Spirit Matters: Parenting a responsibility that needs honest self-assessment

This morning I watched a 1985 video snippet of Fred Rogers, from the longtime children’s television series “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.”

Rogers was a guest on “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” and she asked him what the No. 1 piece of advice he would give parents.

He responded: parents should remember what it was like when they were a child.

Although I have never been a parent, it made sense to me.

If we don’t remember what it was like to be a child, and haven’t examined what remains unresolved from our childhood, we can get lost in our parental duties.

It is so easy as adults with busy schedules that include jobs, maintaining a home and raising children, to get caught up in the speed and stress of living life. In these times, it is difficult for anyone to remember what it was like to experience the world as a child.

To parent a child effectively, Rogers said, you need to remember what it felt like to be a child, what the world looked like as a child, how the world affected you as a child. Children are impressionable and often have big feelings, that need the safety and love of an adult to hold for them, and help them through.

Of course, good parenting requires the ability to form this child, with his or her developing brain, into a responsible and loving human being, one who can as fully as possible, become what the Creator designed the child to be, within the parameters of that child’s life particulars.

That formation requires discipline when needed. Discipline to be a good student, athlete, member of the human family. And instilling discipline in a child isn’t always easy.

It is a momentous task, balancing all of these factors: remembering what it was like to be a child so that you can model empathy and compassion, and also forming a safe and structured environment where they child can learn effective life skills and emotional self-regulation. These realities and one’s capacity to offer them, should be considered before having children.

A parent’s purpose is not to act as a best friend, brother or sister to the child, but to act as one who has the child’s entire life and their best interests at heart. This also means parents shouldn’t dump all of their troubles on their children, or use them as a sounding board. Children are not developed enough to handle these big issues, and should not be expected to parent their parents. This stunts the child’s emotional growth, and only continues a sad cycle.

As I said before, I have never been a parent, but I am well connected with my inner child.

This means I remember and regularly experience the magic of being alive. Wonder, joy, play and discovery can and should be a part of everyone’s life, no matter their age. A simple way to rediscover these emotions is to reconnect with your creativity.

In being connected with my inner child, I also know well the tender places in my heart that still remember how it felt to be forgotten, laughed at, yelled at, mocked and rejected in the big world outside. My inner parent has learned to pay attention to those difficulties my inner child experienced and to find a way to creatively acknowledge them, but not stay stuck in them.

In tending to our inner child in the full spectrum of his or her experiences, we learn once again as adults how to be better human beings, and better parents to our children. We learn to offer compassion and empathy to ourselves, in every stage of life we have been. And, we become people others want to be around more.

Life has many phases and is ultimately one big school, where we hopefully end up leaving it a better place than when we arrived for those who will come after us.

Finally, if you leave this piece with nothing else, remember the greatest rule of them all: ‘do unto others, as you would have done to you.’

That says it all.

SPIRIT MATTERS is a weekly column by Jerrilyn Zavada Novak that examines experiences common to the human spirit. Contact her at jzblue33@yahoo.com.