PAP – Parenting and Politics

Authoritarian Years

When we were infants, we knew nothing. All we wanted were the basic needs, food, rest, play and someone to take the crap out when we poo-pooed. Slowly we managed to move around and became more aware of our environment, we started exploring. At times we wanted to do fun stuff like spilling stuff all over, throwing food everywhere, just basically enjoying the freedom of doing anything that we want, but we had parents and they always did not allowed us to have fun. YOU CANNOT throw things everywhere, YOU CANNOT do dangerous thing, YOU CANNOT do things that is not good for you. How would we know what we should or should not do at that age, it seems fine at that time. There were a lot of scolding, there were a lot of things we could not do, there were oppressive times, but hey life was still generally good.

Schooling Years

We went to school, we made friends and things started to look different and at times confusing. We were told not to shout loudly at home, but here is our friend shouting at the top of his lungs. We was told not to play with toy guns, but here is our friend with his cool toy gun shooting everyone in sight and the best part was it seems to be really fun. Something is wrong, we think our parents are wrong. We started questioning, we started thinking, and we started answering back. But sometimes our questions are actually quite silly.

Rebellious Teenage Years

We are in search of our own identity, we are no longer our parent’s baby, we are an individual, but who are we? We ought to find out.

We tried many things, we went with many other ideas and choose to stop listening to our parents. They may be wrong, look at them and look at our friends parents, our friends all own cool stuff and we don’t, because our parents did not feel that its necessary, our friends parents are cool and our parents suck! Our friend’s parents should be better than our parents, hence we should do what our friend does. We should listen to our friends opposing point of view.

Ok, we have to admit, there were highs and lows, there were the good times and there were times where we made big mistakes, we knew that some of the things we did would leave frowns on our parent’s faces, but we did them anyway. We were punished for our mistakes, but deep down inside a huge percentage of us knew they still cared for us and still agreed with them in our hearts although on the surface we look like we hated our parents.

Young Adult Years

We are now more educated, we have seen more of the world and we knew more stuff. The teenage years were problematic, but with that came maturity also. We started taking on more responsibilities, we wanted to prove to our parents that we can take care of ourselves and we did not need the constant nagging and old fashion lectures. We started taking on more and more responsibilities, we started forming solutions to common problems. We started to run our lives in the way we felt was best for us.

Prime Adulthood

We are now totally doing our own stuff, crafting our own future, totally responsible for what we do. Our parent’s rule over our lives are long gone history. We live in harmony with our Parents and most importantly, we appreciate our parents.

Conclusion

What seems like yesterday when our parents were controlling us totally and telling us what we can and cannot do, fearing that we would harm ourselves, trying their very best to provide us with the best possible environment. We know that they love us, we know that they had our interest at heart, we know parents being parents will always treat their children as their children.

We need to start behaving more maturely, we need to start taking on more responsibilities, we need to prove to our parents who currently have reign over our lives that we can take care of ourselves. But first lets start to contribute back to the family, lets start doing chores, lets start taking on more responsibilities a bit at a time and stop bitching aimlessly and whine at every little small thing, cause that’s just children behaving childishly.