On compassion and love

 The last few days have been hard on me. Hard on my spirit, hard on my soul. But this blog post was something that brought me to tears and gave me a bit of hope for humanity. I tend to take on the yuckiness around me. I really need a better filter I think.

There is this video going around on FB and youtube, it is a dad "disciplining" his daughter. He is mad because she was disrespectful to him by writing a venting note on FB about her mom and dad. This was very upsetting to him, so much so that he felt the very best way to handle it was to humiliate her on the internet and then shoot up her laptop. So many people saw this as a good parenting move, felt like this was a good way to make her respect him and to prove to her that he was the boss. (I found this blog post very well written on the whole matter.)

This broke my heart. Where was the compassion for his daughter, where was the love? Jan Hunt said: "All children behave as well as they are treated" It is true. How did this girl become so "disrespectful"? How did she become so "entitled" (as so many called her), how did she become a "spoiled brat bag" (as someone called her)? Why is there is idea that "kids these days are..." a list of awful nasty things. Why do we feel compelled to treat children less then we would like to be treated? They are so young and fresh and new in the world, what they need more then anything is to know they are loved 100% and that there is compassion for them as they learn and grow and become an adult. Growing up is hard work, you have to test and push and pull and hold back and move forward. And it has NOT changed at all since the beginning of time.

We can not expect our children to be more then we are selves are. You can not hit them for hitting, or not share your cookies and expect them to share their treasures. We seem to have it all backwards. People force independence on infants, and demand strict compliance on young adults.
I am not a perfect parent by any stretch, but I always try to do better. Maya Angelou said "When you know better you do better." When will we learn to do better by our children? When we will see them as actual people? We all love our children, I know that. But it seems to me at times that most people do not like their kids. It makes me so sad. I try and live in a way that my children will always know they are valued, loved and liked very much. I wish that for all children. If we all just remember that we were once children and what is needed most of all is to love them deeply and give them loads of compassion, how can we go wrong?