The Single Event

I am always very aware of my interactions with Nicholas, mainly because I know that events averaged over my lifetime to date are much smaller than the same events averaged over his lifetime to date. I think this is the fundamental calculus that so many parents neglect. In some respects, it is quite unfair to parents that a single, negative event might get burned in to a child’s memory and hold sway over their recollection more than the aggregate of all the parental sacrifices and positive events. It is of little use to complain about this fact of life, because it is, after all, a fact of life. Taken out of the parental domain, this same phenomenon applies to other events in a child’s life - getting bullied, being ridiculed, being ignored, etc. This is, perhaps, why so many parents instinctively know that over caution is warranted when comes to their child’s experiences in the world, even as they forget that the same over caution needs to be applied to their child’s experiences with them. Of course, parents do the best they can under the circumstances they find themselves in, and sometimes these circumstances can be overwhelming, so, as children, we have to evaluate the single events that we hold on to as defining characteristics of the parenthood we were subjected to. This all boils down to awareness on both sides of the parent-child high-wire. We need to teach ourselves to be aware of what we do, and we need to teach our children to be aware of why we do.