This is going to be short (I hope) but I felt that I needed to share this today. I was talking to Ms. L. earlier today and we were talking about (in short) expectations and what we will and will not accept from people, or as far as standards, period. I had an epiphany in the middle of the conversation and it was something that I had always known deep down inside but had never brought myself to say out loud where someone else would actually hear it. Now I don’t want to get too far into detail because it’s a little too personal but it had to do with things that were carried over from my childhood.
Parents we must watch what we say to our children, but more importantly, what we don’t say to them. I hear and read stories about children being bullied in schools, young girls becoming promiscuous, or children just acting like they have no respect for any adult, and when you actually listen to what they have to say you realize that the shortcomings are sometimes within the parents. In my conversation with Ms. L I remembered about all of the things that my mother said to me and mostly what she didn’t say to me. Those words, and those lack of words still live deeply within me today and they have affected my choices and my decisions and sometimes the rough situations I found myself in were a result of what I wasn’t told and shown when I was younger.
I know we teach our children to be independent and that the belief has to come from them that they are smart, and beautiful, and that they are worth more than the hand they are sometimes dealt, and that they don’t have to just settle for what seems to be okay when they could have better. But children need to be told this, and they need to be told constantly because it stays with them. How many times do you hear when someone tells you they are the way they are because that’s what they were taught and brought up to know and do. Now when they are speaking of something good and respectable we congratulate their upbringing, but we forget that that answer applies to those that do things that are not respectable as well.
The children out here being bullied by other, or worse, bullying others and being promiscuous and disrespectful are doing what they are taught, and what was instilled in them somewhere. Either they aren’t being told that they deserve better or they aren’t being made to believe it. Our childhood does stick with us into our adulthood and while you quite possibly should leave some childish things in the past, the things that are ingrained in you, they stick, whether we want them to or not. That’s my thought for today and I hope that someone gets something out of this. Until tomorrow…Let your children know that they are worth, and deserve the very best!
Jimmetta Carpenter
Writer/Editor
The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)
Writing as “Jaycee Durant”
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