When You Kids Teach You How to Grow

I heard a statement that really made an impression on me recently.

“To parents: what is the purpose of having children?”

“To help YOU grow up.”

At first, it sounds so radical and counter intuitive. After all, isn’t it the children’s job to grow up? The parents are the ones that are the ‘grown ups’ right?

Your kids don’t teach you how to grow up, YOU teach your kids how to grow up.

But on deeper thought, it makes perfect sense. The speaker went on to say that “as a parent, you’d do anything for you children… to make them happy.” In essence, it means that parents are completely selfless. And another word for selflessness is LOVE.

Here’s the problem; selflessness is counter-intuitive. Our self-preserving nature calls for us to look out for our own interest, not of others. The first 20 to 30 years of our lives consist of us trying to life and a living for ourselves. We are taught to be concerned about our health, our grades, our career, our car, our house, our this.. our that... We learn how to preserve ourselves, to do what is best for US.

And then suddenly you find yourself a partner, and you now have to be sensitive to their feelings, their needs, their wants, their desires. I think we can agree that loving another person is a learning process. In its truest sense, loving someone takes a lot of effort, humility and selflessness…. None of which comes easily without effort.

Having kids just brings this to a whole different level. Now, you’re expect to put your everything, all your money, all your time, all your effort, all your attention, all your energy into raising a (or several) cretins that scream, shout, cry, shit and vomit around the clock. Sounds scary? You bet’cha..

I’m not a parent (yet) but I do have parents.. and I know enough to know that parents do indeed practically live for their children’s wellbeing. We know they put us before them. We know they make countless sacrifices for us. All children secretly acknowledge this fact even if we do not always say it out loud…. and I imagine that many parents have come a long long way from being carefree young people like you and me to the dependable, ever present stalwarts of our lives today.

How did they become who they are today? How did they become such mature, seasoned and steady characters? How did they ‘grow up’?

They had kids!

Disclaimer : This is by no means trying to encourage people eager to 'grow up' to start having kids. Neither should you be askig immature people to start having kids a'rite..