Causing Happiness In Your Children

I was talking with a friend the other day about having "Daddy Issues." It seems to me that many more people have "Daddy Issues", both men and women, than we have "Mommy Issues."

I wonder why that is?

In listening to hundreds, if not thousands of people over the past few years, it seems to me that we all want and fight for our father's approval than we do for our mother's. Maybe this is because a mother's love is generally more unconditional than a father's love is. Men are generally "problem solvers." We listen in order to "fix" or "solve" issues and conditions. We do this with our view, or belief in how things work in our own lives. Yet, the way that works for us rarely works for everyone else. Yet because we think that our view is workable in our life, we tend to think that it should work for everyone; and we all know that this just isn't the case.

So my message today is this. As a parent, we only have one purpose for our kids.

That THEY are happy.

The way that our children are going to do things is going to be different than our way. They are going to make mistakes, just like we did in growing up, and its important to not prevent them from learning these lessons. We tend to have the view that we "don't want our kids to have to grow up like we did" yet each generation has different issues, and it always has its own process on how to get there.

Yet, if we allow our kids to be who they are, and not try to control HOW they are, it gives them the world of freedom to develop their own life path and their own process which works for them. Instead of having to use the outdated belief system that we use, and arrogantly think should work for them and everyone else, we give them the ability to trust themselves and gain their own workability which gives them our unconditional support, education, experience, and life lessons.

Too many times in our lives, we have looked to our parents and chastised them for not being what we wanted them to be. Too controlling, too smothering, too loving, too vacant, and the story goes on. Our parents raised us in the way that worked for them based on how their parents raised them, and tried to do a better job focusing on their own view of how they would have like to have been raised.

But their view wasn't our view. And our view isn't our kid's view.

So why not let our children have their own view, and give up the controlling aspects that we as parents do? I really don't care how my daughter does things in her life, as long as she does them in a way that work for her. I know that someday, she will learn and move forward with confidence in her own beliefs and abilities that will work for her, and this will make her a happier person. I also know that my daughter using my belief system and wanting to impress me, will not give her her own voice which she needs to be the best she can be. I will be impressed on her finding the way that best works for her, even if it doesn't, or wouldn't work for me. In other words, I don't need her to do things MY WAY in order to be impressed, I want her to do it her way because it works better for her.

That's really what we want as parents for our kids, right? I want my daughter to be happy. When we are happy in life, things work better for us. Life won't be perfect, yet when we are feeling happy, we can adapt better than if we aren't happy.

Ah, giving up control is such a liberating feeling. Who would have thought that only by giving up control, does it make life more manageable?