(The Nationalist, c. December 2001)
My parents are in the sixty-fifth year of their marriage. Recently I asked my mother whether she had any regrets as she looked back over the years. She said she had one – it was that we hadn’t spent more time together as a family.
In fact, we spent a lot of time together. We shared housework and school homework, went for walks and picnics, and the occasional holiday by the sea. But she regretted that we had not done more of it.
As Christmas approaches parents start thinking about presents for their children. And this evokes a memory for me of what my mother spoke about. Perhaps what children need, not only at Christmas but throughout the year, is presence more than presents. By that I mean the presence of their parents at home, not just with them but for them. With them could mean no more than being in the same room, but ignoring them by watching television. For them means being there, not just physically but showing interest in them, talking to them and listening to them.
There are many problems with children in their teen years: – drugs, drinking, smoking, free-and-easy sex, vandalism, joyriding, dropping out of school – you can add more items to the list. To counteract all this maybe what we need is not so much youth clubs as parent clubs where adults can learn from one another how to be parents. I don’t believe parenting comes naturally with the simple fact of becoming a father or mother. Parenting is a skill that needs to be learned. Isn’t it strange that people are trained for almost any and every job but not for the most important one of all, being a parent? The best people to teach it are parents themselves.
Ordinary men and women help each other in Alcoholics Anonymous by sharing their stories. In housing estates, a sense of community is built when people form a residents’ association and talk about their problems together. Parents, though, don’t often seem to share their problems. Some opt out and leave it all to the school. Others let their children run wild and turn a blind eye, denying the problem. But surely parents can take a leaf out of those other people’s book and come together to talk with one another about the challenges of bringing children through the teen years. Unity is strength – doesn’t that apply to parenting also?
At the end of life there can be few things that can give greater satisfaction to parents than the knowledge of having done a good job of bringing up one’s children.