Sometimes, when I sit down to reflect on my journey of life from childhood to adulthood, I can't help but be grateful that I was allowed to face challenges and learn life lessons alongside. Lessons that built my character, lessons that helped my personal growth, lessons that have been helping me in solving problems as they come without waiting for my parents.
Is life really free from hardship, challenges, and obstacles? I don't think so. When I was growing up, I experienced the kind of hard life, which I don't wish that my kids experienced the same thing. At a point I wished to swap my parents for other richer parents who make life easier for their kids. As a child, I questioned God for not allowing me to be born in a family where I wouldn't suffer my flesh and my brain learning or doing anything but have servants around me to do everything for me and have a wealthy daddy who will be giving me a tangible monthly allowance.
So many wishes then, if wishes were horses indeed. But there's one statement my dad mentioned one day while he was alive. He said, even though I have all the riches in life, I would still allow you all, my children, to experience the real-life challenges, face them, and learn from them. Only when you have such experience will you learn how to be a critical thinker and learn to solve problems you may face in the future.
One of my driving forces for working tirelessly each day is to give my children a decent life devoid of hard labor like I did before getting anything.I believe this is also the wish of many parents out there. Those basic needs, I owe them that. I will try my best to give my children the best education they can get, provide for their necessary materials or gadgets they need to learn, buy them good clothes so they can look nice, and send them on vacation once in awhile. Yeah, it's my responsibility to give them this kind of life while they are growing, and it's not too much at all, but not to expose them to so much money even if I have it, but give them the one they can manage so they can learn diligently and prudently.
Having said that, I wouldn't make life so easy for them even if I had all the means as a way of training. How can they be independent of themselves when I am there to provide all they need? How can they develop critical thinking and solve the issues of life themselves in the future?. Eliminating all obstacles in their way instead of allowing them to face and overcome them on their own is a way of limiting them instead, and they wouldn't know how to deal with the complexities of life. There will be a time they will get stranded in life and maybe look for me without finding me. So what becomes their fate? In fact, my children wouldn't even know how rich I am. My role in their lives as their parent is to support and guide them emotionally, financially, advise them, etc., so they don't feel so overwhelmed but let them face life themselves, create tasks, and earn from it.
Wrapping, it can be tempting for some parents to make life so easy for their children, devoid of hardship in life, especially for a parent who tested abject poverty and struggled a lot before making it in life; however, the best we can offer our kids is to give them the needed support while allowing them to face life themselves and overcome it's ups and downs. With that, they will learn resilience, independence, and many other life lessons.
This post is in response to the the #hivelearners contest on the topic titled, Say No To Challenges
All images were created using meta Ai