Driving across the north central part of But wait a minute! If the horse was human, might we not say well that’s his / her choice? Let it (him or her) learn by experience.
Being obsessive, I could not help myself from building a parent-child construct which reflects my controlling nature. “Hey, get back over here! You’ve got a whole couple of acres of highly enriched fodder so forget about that other stuff. It’s not as good as what we feed you”. Running the risk of over-thinking the situation I reinforced my own certitude[1] by observing that the road was only 20 feet way and, without a fence, the horse might have wandered carelessly and it could encounter the same fate as Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro. Broken bones and injuries leading to euthanasia!
I’m sure you catch my drift. How easy it is to fall into the trap of trying to protect that which you love, or more to the point, the ones you love. My confession is that I have tried to control the lives of loved ones without fully understanding the consequences of acting on the certitude of my beliefs of what is in their best interest. With a low level of coping ability, frustration often rose, resulting in unhappiness or hurt feelings. Whether right or wrong in intentions, the wrongs earned resentment, delayed self-learning, and sent kids in search for something else that would affirm instead of aggrieving my loved one. So much for rectitude!
The platitudes and justification remind me of the words of my own parents which I believed then and do so now. “You do the best you can with what you know at the time!” Hmmm! When Mom or Dad uttered those words they were profound; when I recite them they sound trite, perhaps because I absorbed the first part of that platitude (“You do the best you can …”) without considering the parental obligation to increase your knowledge of parenting addressed in the second part! At the time the children were growing I did not throw myself into the study of effective parenting beyond when shots should be given or what to do about bee stings.
Those actions were not parenting! No obsession or flagellation here, just reflections of what I should have done differently. Product knowledge requires study of the owner’s manual. Children are not “owned” but are gifts to be shepherded, however to do so without reading the instructions, available at the public library, borders on incompetence. One falls into “how I was raised” or even the antithesis, by doing just the opposite. Listening to the whole phrase (“You do the best you can with what you know at the time!”) can change the platitude into a proverb. I believe that with rectitude!
Be strong!
[1] Certitude: belief in correctness of opinion. Rearrange the first three letters and you have rectitude. Contrary to the certitude of my children, wife, and acquaintances, rectitude is not how I think with my lower, posterior anatomy; rectitude is rightness of principle or moral conduct. My agricultural experience and accompanying statements regarding agriculture are “certitude”, that is I believe I know what I am talking about without any basis in practical experience.
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