You are the best parents for your child(ren): it's alright to feel you missed it or blew it

This is a part of me very few know.


It's not because I hide it, but I think our organised, efficient, high-speed society has no place for it. Also, it's very occasional.

Well, here is one occasion.

I saw a friend post on Fb about a school his son is aspiring to get into. Suddenly it dawned on me that such a school would be a great fit for my son. But of course, it calls for good grades and a CV. Yes, I, the fish unaware of the water, forgot that. So I allowed myself to get all excited about the possibility, as my son was not keen on the school he would most likely get into by affiliation. Then I talked with the other parent, turned on my computer and looked at the desired school. Immediately, I felt a mix of guilt, sadness and anger fomenting.

This is the sort of system where the winner takes it all, and the winner is a parent who can see years down the road, has resources to send the children to enrichment, keeps track of all aspects of the child's development with sterling planning, or, the parent with a child who is highly self-motivated and capable. So I felt sad that my son will not get to be in an environment where his interests and abilities can be honed. I felt angry at myself for being so blur; "it is a simple flowchart Jenni!" I yell internally at myself. I feel guilty wondering if I have done my best for my son.

What's more, I felt this whole gamut of stuff five years ago with my first born. Now it's worse, coz it looks like i didn't learn anything! Don't get me started on ... "where's the other parent", for we all know the answer to that one. Thankfully, in my case, he deeply loves the children and is involved in their lives. Just not the school bit very much.

I would like for more parents to be able to flub about our trip ups, laugh over our foibles, cry together over our spilled milk. Why doesn't such a parenting club exist? I will call it, "We are humans after all, parents club".

So I drew in a deep breath, and I wrote this.

I believe, somewhere out there is another parent like me.

You want the best for your child but you wonder if you have given them the best. You love them to bits but you know that somewhere out there are things you wish you could give them, but they are forever beyond your reach. You want to provide and prepare them well for life, but you find that it's all a tad complicated. You want your child to thrive and excel but you also know you don't fully buy into the system or the values around you. You wrestle with a child who isn't 'standard issue', who has learning difficulties and temperamental challenges. 

Honestly, I think my comfort and hope will be slim and threadbare if not for this larger truth: my son is first and foremost, God's child. His very breath is a gift from heaven. The sovereign watchcare of God, the signs along the way that shows his present love, and the love between my son and I are more enduring and important. Missed opportunities, detours, delays, cannot upend God's desire and plan for us as long as we do our best, even if our best seems to fall short of the national standard.

In fact, the Spirit whispers, "your best is always love".

But "all parents love their children", I respond.

{Important sidenote: when the Spirit whispers, don't talk back. Listen some more.}

[me sitting and waiting....then a memory comes back]

I search for one of the first parenting books I read, How To Really Love Your Child, and find this:

"The foundation of a solid relationship with a child is unconditional love. Only this can assure a child's growth to full potential. Only this foundation of unconditional love can assure that such problems as feelings of resentment, being unloved, guilt, fear, insecurity don't become significant problems." 

"Jesus looked at the young man and loved him.." ~ Mark 10v21

This was no surface, superficial, fluff. This young man had come respectfully with a great question, a serious desire. Jesus saw that he was not ready for the answer. Yet Jesus loved him, and loved him enough to tell him what he needed.

This is love. It really sees the person, beyond the 'presentation', whether that is potential or problems.
This is love. It really believes the person is far more that what is presently clear.
This is love. It really feels and reaches out with truth to free the person from his burdens.

In a moment of anxiety like the one I had, my son became a statistic.

The Holy Spirit is comforting me and reminding me that I have loved and that is what counts. In the years that I have kept on choosing to see him for who he is at each milestone, and helping him take the next steps that he needs (not the system wants him to) so that he is growing, I realise is love.

Loving my son is about me accepting my child where he is, and yet knowing he needs to keep going and growing, all the while, safe in his Heavenly Father's love, experienced through my unconditional love for him.

The fluster and bluster is brief and I am located back in a place of peace and conviction, and looking forward to see him back from school!

So, welcome to the Real Parents Love Unconditionally Club and share the Love!

this wonderful book!

You are the best parents for your child(ren): what to do when she ... ^%$@)!* ??!!

Last week my seventeen year-old said to me with some alarm that she overheard young primary school kids swearing and using vulgarities on the public bus. This is what she said,

"What's wrong with these kids? I mean, I know right, that we swear, like in my school we do a lot...but these kids are so young! What's even going on?"

What is going on?


Won't we all like to know.

It used to be that swear words and bad language was the unkind stereotype of some segments of society. I add that I learnt and used that kind of language where I grew up too, but my older sister put a stop to it with her ingenius method of making us pay five cents for each bad word she heard. It was very effective!

But today, this is no longer the case. It's par for the road in media, and of course it is not helped that we now have political leaders whose language use is so sorry and even sick. What has sneaked up on us?

Won't we all like to know?

More importantly, why don't we know? Where have we buried our heads and sold our attention and given our energies to? Why in a era of such progress and possibilities is the raising of the next generation still a task that eludes so many of us?

Definition of expletive

1. 1a :  a syllable, word, or phrase inserted to fill a vacancy (as in a sentence or a metrical line) without adding to the sense; especially :  a word (such as itin “make it clear which you prefer”) that occupies the position of the subject or object of a verb in normal English word order and anticipates a subsequent word or phrase that supplies the needed meaningful contentb :  an exclamatory word or phrase; especially :  one that is obscene or profane

Both my kids have come back from school and spouted stuff that shocked me. In one instance, my primary four asked me for the meaning of a Hokkien* expletive! I thought it was very crude back in my time and would have gone the way of the dinosaur. But clearly, it's still circulating!


We were very firm that they could hear it but not learn it, and certainly not repeat it. I am not naive to think that they won't bow to the pressure to use it since it's the lingua franca in school (and please don't expect teachers to police this too, they have enough to do. However, the children have reported that the teachers themselves swear at times, sigh).

When my daughter was in primary school more than a decade ago, the girls regularly gushed 'O my God'. I thought about it and felt that it came close to a violation of the musise of the word 'God' for a fomring mind and heart so I banned it. Instead we devised alternatives, since of course, she would need to be able to express exclamation.

When the son's turn rolled around, the vocabulary had already shifted.

Recently, I found my junior college going gal weaken and use 'f' words! She knew it was far from healthy nor elegant, yet it was so commonplace that she just fell in with the crowd. Being older, and with a foundation of what's right and wrong, I could point her to Scripture and clearly say that she will have to put a stop to it.

From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so. Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and salt water? Can a fig tree, my brothers, bear olives, or a grapevine produce figs? Neither can a salt pond yield fresh water. ~ James 3v10-12, ESV

For the record, she goes to an elite school in Singapore. It's like a global youth language popularised by the media.

Should we parents and caretakers be doing anything about it? Of course. If you don't want to be sweared at in your old age, do something about it now. Language habits stick.

Here is what I have done. Please share your experiences in the comments!

a) with very young children
Immediately insist that it is wrong and devise alternatives. use 'Aiyo, Goodness, O dear...susah..' Don't give them smartphones please. There is plenty to show they don't make the kids smart at all. Time to turn this tide around. If you have already given them one, make sure you place parental controls on what they can access. {restrictions for apple products, android products}

b) with older children
Reinforce that it is wrong, talk about why people resort to such language, discuss how it stumps one's ability to communicate well. I mean if you can say 'f-' rather than 'I feel so upset because...',  your emotional maturation will be truncated.

Other habits that are very helpful: establish the language and tone that is acceptable in your home. I must say this will require parents to go along too!

Getting even very young children to journal so that there is a healthy emotional outlet is also very useful. Children today are awakened emotionally, psychologically and even sexually way before they are ready. For example, the stresses of school imposes a huge emotional burden many are not mature enough to manage. So, there is a lot of pent-up emotion in children that is coming out via social media and in their language. This state predisposes them to be vulnerable to suggestions including attempting behaviours that promise relief. If we allow our children to swear rather than really talk, we are not helping them.

So what is at stake here isn't respectability or social niceties. It's far more.

Let's get to work parents! You can do it. We must do this.


*Hokkien is a dialect of the Chinese language, the dominant dialect in Singapore

a heart of wisdom, a head of white- living well and strong.

The 11 year-old was sitting right by me quietly for a while, then suddenly: Mom! You have so much white hair! You are getting so old...

Slightly startled at his newfound knowledge, I soon compose myself, laughed and reminded him to take good care of his old ma.

He leans over and gives me a hug, as if getting old was such a disaster!

Live long enough and age seems such a bad thing. Women in particular have been known to be skittish about age. So we invent what I call common-wisdom:

Age is only a number
Mind over matter: if you don't mind it, it don't matter.
You don't look your age

Age is a number - that represents something.
So it does matter.
Looking our age isn't the issue, acting our age is!

In contrast to common wisdom, God calls us to be aware of our days, to mark the seasons and to number our days!

We are to live with an awareness of our mortality.

Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes ~ James 4v14

Ouch.

We have an expiry date, and we do not get to set it. This is what I call hard truth.

Pair this with:

Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. ~ Psalm 90v12

This remembrance of our mortality is not morbid. Rather it is purposeful.
With the reality of our mortality, this Psalm tells us that we not to simply pass our days, but to observe if our hearts are enlarging and deepening with a distinct quality called wisdom.

So I ask myself:

Does my wisdom match my graying hairs?

Do I know, feel, act like a 50 year-old who has gone through what I have gone through?

Knowing that tomorrow may never come, do I live in hostage to my past, or trapped in anxiety about the future? Should I not be fully present in the current moment and realities?

What have I made of the experiences of pleasure, satisfaction, and fullness?
What has become of me through the losses, pains, betrayals and sacrifices?


To know our mortality is to appreciate the present.
To gain a heart of wisdom is to have something from our past to offer the present.

Zipping through our days won't give us either.

What experience has made you feel alive?

What experiences have made you feel deadened?

These two questions that are derived from an old practice of self-examination* takes both our mortality and our potential seriously. What makes us alive is indication of our true self and the gift we are to the world. What deadens us suggest to us that we are not strong enough or not meant to walk that way.

You may live to a hundred, but would you want to be a stranger to yourself at the end?
You may live less than the average life span, but your spark has left light, love and truth behind!

When God calls us to gain a heart of wisdom, it means that it matters how we pass our days. It also means that we can allow our days to shape and polish us so we can grow age with grace and confidence.

It's time to stop fussing over time management. The sands of time will flow on. The tick-tock will continue.

Manage instead our motives, our moods, and meanings. Assign the most time to the things that matter the most. Allocate times of freshness and energy to what you truly value. Design appointed times for reflection and deep thought.


Pray with me:

“Show me, Lord, my life’s end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting my life is. ~ Psalm 39v4

And remember, we can count on this:

My times are in Your hands ~ Psalm 31v15

ThMom! You have so much white hair! Getting SO old...