Gummy Chronicles
Black parenting with compassion
Gummy chronicles:
I’m sitting here watching tv and my son yells and grunts from the kitchen. He was eating an Italian sausage and the bun broke. I asked him what was wrong and he told me his bun broke and he hates that. My first instinct was to tell him, well eat it anyway because I’m not wasting a bun. He said “That sucks!” But then the weirdest thing happened. I realized that does suck and I wouldn’t want to be stuck with somebody telling me I couldn’t get another bun. I imagined how I would feel in his situation. I chose to give him some of the power in that moment. I as a parent dont have to have all of the power in the “relationship”. Because that’s exactly what it is, a relationship. Think of how you would feel if somebody you were in a romantic relationship always had all the power. Told you when to eat. What to eat. What to wear. When to bathe. Imagine you rarely ever got to make a decision. Would you enjoy or want to be in that relationship? You could only imagine that type of relationship having a lot of arguing right? Lots of crying and anger? Sound familiar? COMPASSION! I, in that moment, expressed compassion for my child. Compassion that had never been given to me I realized.
I also realized my parents always told me no for things that inconvenienced them. I realize now that parents, myself included, are very selfish individuals. When I would have a tantrum because my hot dog bun broke, I was told to just eat it because the bun would be a waste of money. The tantrum came because I already knew that the answer was going to be no because they always said no and I felt there was no possibility of a yes before I even asked. If I were another adult asking for a bun that isn’t broken, my parents would give it to them and probably say “Yeah, I don’t like my bun broken either. Which is exactly what I thought of when my son flipped out about his bun. I thought well he’s right, I don’t like that either so I got up and got him a bun. Why is it when I was upset about my broken bun and fussed, I was considered being spoiled and my parents didn’t want to indulge me? Which really means to make kids realize they can’t have everything they want. My parents set me up to deal with failure instead of always telling me I can succeed and that the yes’s will outweigh the no’s. So, they lead me with no’s to help me get used to hearing them. They beat down my self-esteem because that’s what constant no’s does, it makes you always feel worthless like your opinion doesn’t matter. I thought I didn’t have any control over any situation, because I already knew the answer was going to be no. So the tantrum comes over when things don’t go their way and you know that it's final and you can’t control the outcome either way. You realize you have no power so you engage in power struggle. I had a sense of failure. Adults have tantrums as well when things don’t go their way if you pay attention. Our parents treat another adult with compassion and respect but why not the children? It should be the same compassion for every person regardless of age. Isn’t that a form of ageism if you don’t treat kids with respect because of their age? I know that some Black parents don’t respect children because they don’t contribute anything to society yet. The kids don’t earn money to pay bills and buy things, so the parents lack respect for them.There should be no distinction between parent and child. That asserts that one has complete authority over the other. Why would that ever be true and doesn’t that sound much like slavery? Isn’t that what most of them say now about billionaire Republicans? That the rich don’t care about the middle class and poor, only the one percent? Don’t they say that is wrong and selfish. This new wave of Black parenting should involve reflection. I think it should be about examining the behaviors we grew up with before to correct past mistakes. If we always reach back and examine the way we were raised and what we thought affected us the most, and worked to correct that one part in our own parenting, then we were working our way towards compassion more and more every generation. Isn’t that the way to utopia? If we always moved forward and focused on correcting mistakes in relationships, we would all be in love all of the time. Hundreds of thousands of years from now, we could all be reincarnated into Utopia. Because we constantly worked and made progress in ourselves every time we reincarnated. We are ALL humans.
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