Trusting Our Children and Its Importance

We love them so much, don't we?

Our children; they are pieces of us to whom we open the doors of the most intimate shelters deep within our souls. Doesn't your heart flutter when you remember the excitement when we first grasped the future they would bring to our family? Our hopes, our unconditional loves. We who, with foresight, calculated every detail of their needs before they were even born and arranged their living spaces for their utmost comfort. We who prepared suitcases full of clothes for them before they even said hello to life. Many of us who played classical music during pregnancy for their intelligence to develop. Those we were jealous of more than our spouses when they were born. Those we sometimes hurt our parents for while dealing with nannies and kindergartens.

It shouldn't have been like this.

Then school life began. The first teacher, the first friendships. The meaningless feeling we experience when we sense ourselves moving away from the center of their lives as they begin to grow. Our effort to keep hold of the reins as they socialize and grow up. The small issues that come with socialization and our responsibility as parents to these children, our obligation to resolve these issues and our problem-solving techniques. Our disappointments when we see and feel that our children are also at fault in the flow of life while dealing with their problems. Are we prepared for the difference between how we understood marriage and parenthood when we were single and the problems we face after becoming homeowners? Becoming parents without much thought to the emotional, need-based, and logical reasons for marriage and parenthood can surprise us. When we felt so capable of life, having lived so much, what is it that this little child can immerse us in thought? Then the blaming begins. We should have wrestled with these children like in the happy scenes of television series, gone for picnics, played basketball. Neighbors should have pointed us out for having these children, and we should have received praise in parent-teacher meetings. Small-scale problems were possible, but their scale was smaller. But look at this! Always problems, always problems. Finding a nanny, dealing with a nanny is very difficult. No matter what you do, they wet the bed at night, you can't cope. They argued with their friends at kindergarten, find the reason, try to solve the problem. Their teeth are coming out crooked, get orthodontics; allocate time, money. Their grades are not as good as you expect, what should you do? Think about it... It takes your time, your energy. They don't understand you. You can't understand them. They make you feel bad. They make you feel weak, inadequate. You are unprepared, in short. First, we must trust ourselves. How did we raise this child? Who are they? What do they do? What don't they do? Whose part are they? As our child blames us, and we blame them, the blaming intensifies. A new brick is added to the wall forming between us with every event. It seems we are failing at being the adult. More accurately, we don't know we are the adults of our children, not their friends. We fail to see this. Who is the adult? They are the one with a strong character, who can act calmly, make decisions without panicking, and who never withholds their compassionate embrace from the younger one, no matter what. They are the one who can show the virtue of gently stroking the head with compassion whenever approached, even if a mistake is made. And they can digest this difficulty. Yes, it is a virtue and it is difficult. Well, who said being a parent was easy? What I understand is that when we don't trust our children, we act with our own lack of faith in our upbringing techniques. Then we create fears and start living with assumptions, awakening the detective within us. One day we find ourselves searching our child's belongings without any negative signs. Another day, we organize surprise visits to school under the pretext of "I came to pick you up from school." When did we turn into secret spies? Why did we turn into them? Is it necessary? What will we gain as secret spies? What are we expecting to find? How far can we go, driven by our fear, our esteemed minister of suspicion, without overcoming our biases? How calmly can we evaluate the results we obtain? Of course, the fear of losing control panics us. So let's invite logic. Let our self-confidence accompany this invitation to logic. Let's be generous in our hospitality and resolute in our welcoming of logic.