Have you ever wished that someone would invent the time machine so that you could go back in time and do things differently? Would you believe me if I told you most all of us had a time machine at our disposal all our lives and most refused to take advantage of this awesome machine and all that it could do to alter our lives? Not all were so lucky to have access to such a machine. Some were smart enough to use it to their advantage and their lives are almost exactly where they wanted them to be. Soon after we take our first breath these magnificent machines are working hard to plan our futures to be the very best possible. These machines are our parents. Of course, most cannot see how these machines are working with our best interest in mind. All they can see is a dictatorship, control, and request that seem to make little or no sense to us. So we ignore it, we rebel, and in our delusional states of mind convince ourselves we can do better-taking control of our own destiny. So we take our first step into the real world. Only to make our first real discovery. That step isn’t a step at all, it’s a giant leap into darkness. All of a sudden we are overwhelmed with growing pains. Finding a place to live, furnishing it, turning on the utilities, transportation, insurance, food, and like a ton of bricks it hits you. How in the heck am I going to pay for all this? Now in the back of your mind your thinking, what in the hell was I thinking? For many, a child comes into the picture when you are not much more than a child yourself. But you have too much pride to admit you were wrong and couldn’t possibly give your parents the satisfaction of knowing they were right. So you deal any way you can with hardship after hardship, after hardship until you feel the world is collapsing down on top of you. Then you go to your parents and ask for help or if you can come back home. Parents have got to work on a relationship with their children. A relationship built on trust, not humility. A child needs to know they can come to you about anything, I mean absolutely anything and you’ll be there for them and do everything you can to understand, to help, and guide them. If they know this they will be open to receiving the services of your time machine. All our elders are time machines. They know all the tricks, all the games, all the sneaky plans we come up with. They also know what will hurt us, what is bad for us, and what is more likely to help us live that fairy tale life than we do. We have all said we wish we would have listened to our parents. Now we preach to our kids about listening to us. Why don’t we think about why we didn’t listen to our parents and fix that first. We all want to try and prevent our children from making the same mistakes we did. We love them and want only what is best for them. Children learn by example, just like you did. Your kids are going to do just about everything you did and maybe more, scary huh but you know it is coming that’s why you are now the time machine. From your own experiences, you take your children down memory lane. Hoping they will learn from your mistakes. What they get from it will depend on you. Are you sharing that bad experience laughing and bragging about the fun you had and warning about the trouble you could have gotten into? Or are you sharing that experience with sorrow and regret showing them how bad you feel even to this day? Take what you learned from your parents and from life to help make your child’s life a better one. But never forget the child you once were and how you wished your parents would just listen to you and try to understand. You are the time machine now.
Simply my thoughts
Dean Butler
