Guest post from Christina Fletcher
A child sees an ornament or beautiful item at a store, and in her own curiosity and wonder reaches up to touch it, to feel it, to know it.
As a parent, we see it from the other angle… will the ornament break, will the store person get stressed, will our child do something wrong… will we “get into trouble” or even just embarrassed?
The mirage of thought traffic that goes through our heads at that moment is almost bottlenecked, often resulting in a snapping remark of “Don’t Touch” or grabbing a child before fleeing out the door.
We then feel guilty or awkward, knowing within that we might have repressed our child’s own sense of curiosity.
As parents, we often forget that we are also still people as well. We carry with us baggage from our own childhood, from beliefs of how we should act, how our children should act and often we don’t pack light. From the moment we sit with our children in our arms for the first time, we can feel pulled in all directions, scrambling to uncover what we really think and feel: Who are we each in this role of a parent, what is important to us, what do we want our children to know for sure?
