Fathers Day in the Garden
This Father’s Day was a day of reflection in the garden being the first day of Spring, in fact the whole weekend, two solid days, 5 bags of mulch, 2 bags of fertilizer, bag of manure, heap of weeding, watering and yes, a couple of beers throughout.
Parenting changes so much as you get older and the one thing that stood out for me today is as you get older you tend to reflect more about your parenting maybe because as their growing up in the earlier years you don’t get the time for the reflection. No time to second guess yourself surely but the issues change it’s almost easier watching a toddler knowing that if he or she takes one more step towards the end of that coffee table then they are more than likely going to fall and of course hurt themselves. The difference is back then your role is obviously to intervene upon the prediction that you know something is going to happen that will either harm them or you make a calculated guess based on your experience and you either move the child away from the coffee table in this instance or a few years later you might have a different situation where you just say No – again intervention based on experience.
When I say Parenting changes when you get older so does everything else around it, that also becomes more obvious – it all becomes so much more serious, perhaps because there is just so much more at play. A toddler losing a dummy is a lot different to a young adult losing a job or something of significance or another analogy a toddler falling from a walker to having a car accident there is just so much more in between that has so much more impact on life, that being said so much more consequence and so much more at stake. So, where I am going with this – I split this into two thought processes whilst digging away, leaving myself questioning both, thus the reflection.
You see the intervention never stops the big difference now to back then is your children had no choice but to accept your intervention, now it becomes a choice this is the hard part to grapple not to mention the reasons why your intervening become so much more serious. Us as adults have already had the pleasure of making all the mistakes (believe me I have made a few) and whether we have learnt from them is irrelevant here because it becomes the Deja Vue thought and then of course passing that down to our children, the repercussion the consequence. It’s the witnessing of knowing their making the same mistakes or through experience knowing what the outcomes will be a lot of the time after the fact. This is the first part – how do you warn them and how do you get them to listen without thinking what’s the Old Man going on about now or thinking that you only have it in for them.! The second part – maybe there are some mistakes you just have to let them make, no matter how much it’s going to hurt you or them.
One thing I have really noticed this year is that each and everyone of them has been in a predicament in the past 6-12 Months and each time I have predicted the outcome. Yes, some I have let go, others I have tried to intervene for the prevention of the outcome to no avail. It doesn’t matter how good of a parent you are while they are growing up you can only trust you have set them in the right path, but they are still going to make mistakes when they are adults this is inevitable. Thus, the quandary reflection you can only hope that they will listen leading to them not making the same mistakes or avoiding the new ones, the adult intervention it’s a lot harder than what you think.
I love gardening and the farm is slowly but surely becoming my oasis in life – I often thought that it was the love of watching things grow and the accomplishment of it afterwards but after Sunday I underestimated the reflections whilst doing it…..
