Your children are everyone’s future

Child rearing is more than molding children into tiny versions of ourselves. We need to teach reasoning and decision and selection. Many parents are already very good at this with their toddlers, and it can be as simple as choosing an outfit, or selecting a paint color for their room.
So why is it we fall apart as parents when our children are old enough to vote?

There has been a lot of talking over the last couple weeks around and about the recent elections and their process. And as much as I try not to listen, all this talk has uncovered a family phenomenon that disturbs me.

Parents who try to get their adult kids to vote along their party lines, and even publicly disapprove when they do not.

Parents, please –don’t underestimate and certainly don’t abuse the influence you have on your children – even when they are grown. You must know that by trying to make them acquiesce to your way of thinking only one of two things can happen.
They will bend– thereby losing their own conscience and most likely becoming apathetic.
Or they will rebel – by simply choosing the opposite. Unfortunately that decision will not be made of rational and intelligent reasoning. It’s simply falling back into the psychological play of the persuasive parent and indignant child.

These are people, people. They have their own minds. Right or wrong, with you or against you – they think.
That, my friends, is the greatest gift of being a parent. To have spawned, sheltered and released a person who can think, and be, and is whole.


Allow me to give you an example:

Let’s be in the living room of a typical American home. You see a strapping young man pacing – sick with worry, weak with fear, visible sweat on his brow. He is about to tell his conservative parents he is gay. And he is anticipating their rejection, their anger, and worst - their disapproval.
You feel his pain don’t you?
You’re already mad at his parents for not being accepting and supportive, aren’t you?

Ok.
Now… let’s be in a different living room down the street.
Another strapping young man, feeling the same fears, the same doubts and only really wanting his parent’s acceptance.
But this boy’s parents are liberal lesbians, and he is about to tell them… he is a Republican.

People – could you just let you children grow into their own adulthood. Create a loving and accepting environment where free thinking is encouraged. Where to live under the same roof with someone who doesn’t vote your way is comfortable, even applauded.
Help them to reason their own views. Not to follow yours.

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. But it does fall.