Raising a child - Being the child you want

As the birth is coming closer and the time when I'm going to be a father is getting near I'm thinking more and more about raising children and life quality and meaning in general. Will I be a good father? Will I avoid the mistakes of my parents? How do I raise the child into being himself and not my image of the perfect son? I say son because that's what we think it will be, which is really exciting.



Being the child you want
What I'm learning already is that my son will be a mirror of me. What I do and how I act will be how my son will act and do. If I say one thing and do another then my son will learn to say and do differently as well. If I act angry then my son act angry, if I have patience then my son will have patience, if I show love then my son will show love, if I express my feelings, thoughts and fears, then my son will do the same. So the bottom line is, I need to be the one I want my son to be.


This is of course the hardest thing because it takes me inside of myself to take care of all those things that need fixing and attention, because I don't want my son to have the same problems I have. I didn't have a lot of contact with my father during my upbringing, so I need to be careful not to continue that path, because that's the key, stopping established paths that are not wanted, letting it go and starting a new path, a path that I feel comfortable living with.

Letting the child be itself
Having said this, I must also point out that in trying to raise the child into something that I want I still need to let the child be itself and be supportive of whom that is. If he wants to be a sports dude then I need to drop my wish for an artistic child however hard that might be. All I can do is to provide the tools for him to choose, to give him experiences and opportunities, to show him as much of life as possible. Through this he will be able to see what paths that match what his heart tells him for that's one thing that I want, for him to follow his heart, so what do I need to do? Follow my own heart of course... this is going to be a life changing journey for me.

That's all for now... you can take these words and apply them to you and your child if you have one, hope it might help. I'm guessing I will post more on the parenting topic in the future.