Being a parent is tough. It’s just challenging try to meet the mental, physical, emotional and spiritual needs of our children. We have an idea of how to raise our kids based on how we were brought up. Then there are our friends and family who have opinions. Lastly, there is the endless list of bloggers, authors and “professionals” telling us what works and what doesn’t.
It’s not easy to know where all the boundaries are drawn let alone do I have too many or too few?
One thing that is hard to argue with is the need for a child to be resilient. Someone who when knocked down don’t get stuck with disappointment but can get back up and move on. The child who when they fail at something doesn’t see it as a failure but as another step on the road to get to where they want to go.
Arguably, resilience is the one thing that allows all other good qualities and values to not get swallowed up by failure and disappointment but to actually flourish in a person’s life.
What if there is a roadmap showing us not just what Resilience looks like but how to get there?
That is exactly what this weeks episode is all about. Chris and Holly Santillo are the authors of Resilience Parenting, During this episode and in their book, they outline an entire process to understand what resilience is and how we can teach it to our children. Which means giving them the gift of overcoming setbacks, failures, and disappointments in order to live their very best life. Take a listen here.
The Face of Incarceration
The movie Trading Places is a comedy that stars Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd as a homeless man and a wealthy cultured man respectively. Being a comedy there are multiple instances for laughing, however, it was thought-provoking for me the first time I saw it.
The two men are unwittingly transposed into each other’s lives. They in turn start to make different types of decisions that reinforce their new circumstances.
The poor man who is now in a wealthy lifestyle grew in self-respect and higher expectations of himself.
The wealthy man who found all his resources taken away turned to anger and feeling sorry for himself and indulging in petty crime.
Was it Nature, their personality or Nurture, their surroundings.
I interviewed a man last week, Quan Huynh (pronounced-Hhhhwen). Quan experienced a pivotal event in his life at the age of 13. A painful event. The hurt and the resulting anger from it stayed with him. And over time it grew into rage and violence. It climaxed in a violent night for him as an adult when he took the life of another person.
The events prior to him taking that man’s life shaped him into the person who was capable of taking life.
In the span of one minute, both families would be changed forever.
One minute. One choice.
If the story ended there, it would just be a sad story. A painful story. And a story that you might argue for both Nature and Nurture.
The story didn’t stop there though. Quan went to prison. And though he went in angry and violent, there was a day when he started to ask himself questions about himself. Important questions. Hard questions.
One of them was, “Can I be somebody very different than the person I have been?”
Quan’s story is about many things. Pain, Anger, Violence… Guilt, Possibility, Hope… Transformation, Redemption, 2nd chances and how does a person carry on after taking another person’s life.
I’m grateful Quan shared his story with me. It’s a difficult story for obvious reasons. There were a couple of things that I struggled with that I share at the end of the episode.
Yes, there is residual pain in his story. A life is gone. Nothing will change that.
But Quan has become somebody else. He is no longer a man who is a slave to the anger and rage and bitterness that shaped him into a person who took another’s life.
Quan chose a different path as his time in prison progressed. He chose to make conscious choices. Hard choices. Painful choices.
Choices that have changed his heart.
And by changing his heart, he has changed the future of his life and all those he comes in contact with.
While he was convicted of murder, he is choosing not to be defined by that moment or his old life. He is choosing not to be trapped in a cycle of pain and violence. His choices are no longer about the past and a hardened heart. They are about the future and the choices of a new heart.
As our heart goes, so goes our life.
Quan made choices to not be forever framed in by his previous choices. He has made new choices that create a new future distinctly different from the other life he created. Choices to help and not to hurt.
Choices that can create a life that can brightly outshine the dark moments of his past.
Mark speaks to Rome Za, a Brazilian Ju Jitsu Practitioner, Life Coach, and Entrepreneur. Rome speaks about his childhood, including immigrating to the US from Chechnya, not being able to speak the language, dropping out of high school, going back to school to become a doctor only to drop out again before graduating as an undergraduate.
The idea of having a baby can be joy-filled with the idea of how wonderful life will be. The arrival is anticipated and celebrated. The pure love we feel holding the child and the smell of a new baby’s skin can make the world feel right again. As it well should.
Then reality sets in for many.
Sleepless nights and fatigue start to be the order of the day. The demands of what seems like never-ending attention for the child’s needs. And then the constantly changing personality of the new baby starts to show up. And more and more of that personality shows up as they get older and there isn’t a manual to decipher that personality or tell us how to deal with it.
Most of us who become parents tend to follow the examples of the parents we grew up with. I mean if it was good enough for me then it’s good enough for my kids.
But sometimes, “good enough,” isn’t really good enough. What if there is a better way? What if I could do some things differently that make raising a child better than what I experienced. What if we could help them more and be frustrated less.
Author and teacher, Paul Prendergast outlines six qualities to focus on as we raise our children. The qualities are meant to reduce Painful Parenting and turn it into something that gives parents a solid foundation to launch their children into the world. It gives children the solid character needed to live in an ever-changing world.
It is possible to reduce Painful Parenting and turn it into a more positive experience for everyone. Take a listen here.