Parenting is a bit of yourself and a bit of your children

Many parents think of parenting as giving on to our children our norms and values, that they may also take them as their own. But this is just actually half of it. The other half of parenting, to my opinion and in my own practice, is letting our children participate in their own upbringing. As a matter of fact, generation gap exists between parents and children. And for some, cultural gap also exists. We, as parents, are a product of our times and of the particular culture we grew in. Our children are a product of their time, the present, and of the particular (sub)culture they are growing in. It is therefore too much to expect from our children to fully understand and empathize with our own norms and values. For our norms and values are a product of our generation and the particular culture we grew in, which is beyond the experience of our children. No matter how we explain our point of view to our children, they remain our point of view. In the same way, no matter how we try to understand the present generation and the (sub)culture of our children, they remain our children's world of experience. So, there will always be a generation gap and a cultural gap between us, parents, and our children. To accept this as a fact is, to my opinion, essential in parenting.

Having accepted the fact that there will always be a generation gap and a cultural gap between us and our children is the first step in parenting. Then we are ready for the second step. And this is letting our children themselves participate in their own upbringing. Of course, an important aspect of this is letting our children understand that their parents come from another generation and (sub)culture, a world which is not theirs. If our children understand this, then they will also realize that their present norms and values are not necessarily ours, and that it may be difficult for us to completely understand these norms and values, and tolerate them, much more accept them.

So now we have parents who accept the fact that their children don't live in the same "world of experience" as they have lived. And we have children who understand that their parents came from another "world of experience", different from theirs. Then the process of dialogue and negotiation between parents and children can begin. A process based on a mutual acceptance of each other's differences in perspectives, where each one is open to take the other into consideration, and on this basis will be open to accommodate each other in a healthy compromise. This, I think, is the essence of parenting. It is a bit of yourself, and a bit of your children.