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Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Children's children are a crown to the aged, and parents are the pride of their children. Proverbs 17:6

April 29, 30 2012 The month of April is over. March and April of this year have gone by so quickly. Sunday was another beautiful day in Austin. I spent my day sitting on the patio in the cool morning, working in the yard, and taking it easy. I am a thinking person. Always in my head processing new information, reprocessing old information, and spending a lot of time analyzing my own life, especially the past. Even at my age now, I am still realizing the ever lasting effect certain events from my childhood still have on me in my adult life. All throughout my life I have struggled with an identity crisis, anxiety, depression, and self-doubt. I use to think there was something really wrong with me because of my lack of coping skills in certain situations, as well as my fear of making mistakes. Over the years, however, I have come to learn the origin of these feelings and wonder what life could have been like if I was not subjected to them. The origins I speak of have to do with the way I was parented. My parents did the best they could in raising my brothers and me. Their own coping skills were strained at best, especially my father. He was anxiety ridden almost all of his life. I suspect his anxiety stemmed from the demands his father put on him. From stories I have been told about my father growing up under the iron fist of his father, my father was never good enough or smart enough to measure up to his father’s standards. Growing up, I too could never measure up to my father’s standards. To him, I was incompetent at everything. If I made a mistake he severely scolded me, not just once for the same thing but years later he was still bringing up my mistakes made years before. I could never do anything right. He saw me as a weak person who could be easily threatened and manipulated. One thing he didn’t understand was that I was a child. I didn’t know a lot as a child because no one ever taught me anything. I was expected to know everything at an early age. Not knowing then, that I had to be taught how to do things in life, I began to see myself as an incompetent person who would never measure up to being as good as anyone else. This caused me great anxiety and depression at an early age. I entered school already feeling like a failure at the age of five. I became extremely self-conscious. I was afraid to make a move or do anything independent of my mother (who protected me) because I felt I would fail at anything I tried. My father’s lack of faith in my abilities, created my lack of faith in myself. His sever judgment of me on compounded matters worse. I fell short of his every expectation, as he had predicted. As a teacher, I saw the same behavior in my students who came from backgrounds similar to mine. I really felt for these kids. I went through school, struggling with almost every subject. School itself was anxiety provoking for me. I was always on edge in school, fearing the teacher would ask me a question I could not answer. Reading and math was a struggle for me. I persevered and graduated from high school and eventually graduate school. My father never acknowledged my accomplishments as an adult. Eventually, I was able to accept that he never would acknowledge any success I would experience and was able to move on with my life learning to believe in myself. One of the most important things parents can give their children is the ability to believe in themselves no matter what their struggles in life. Parents are our children’s first teachers. If we give our children the message they are failures with us, they may never be successful. If they do become successful it will not be without a high price wrought with anxiety, depression, and a life lion struggle to feel as good as everyone else. The next time you become upset with your children, put yourself in their place before you talk to them. Think about how you wanted to be talked to as a child before unleashing your anger on them. Talk to them in a way that will get the message across without making character judgment statements. A child may see to survive your attempted character assassination on the outside but on the inside you are slowly killing them. .