Among the many things that fascinate me, I love thinking about the debate of nature vs nurture. I think about this a lot with regards to raising a child. All of my friends and family, they all have different ideas, theories, traditions, etc in raising their families. Each in our own way are right and wrong. We are humans...we can always improve ourselves and we will always have faults. When you look at other parents, the wrong seems to be the stuff we always focus on. I won't lie, I do it too. I will 100% admit to being a flawed parent. I don't have a clue what I am doing and my ideas of parenting are challenged at least once a day, if not much more. Overall, I do my best. I have my moments where looking back (sometimes even while I'm doing it), I know I was wrong and there was a better way of handling a situation. But my goal, even if I fail often, is always to improve. And in improving my parenting, I want L to improve too. Some of L's issues are most definitely a nature issue. But a lot are nurture. He is a little sponge and absorbs everything, usually it is our faults that he picks up the quickest.
I was speaking with someone about L being autistic. The moment you hear the word "autism" you immediately think of a child who is severely autistic, a child who is quiet and isn't really interested in people. L is quite the opposite. This has proved to be difficult for us (which is absolutely crazy because this isn't a BAD thing) because he doesn't display the "typical" symptoms. After being around L for a while, you will see that he does have little issues that deal with the social aspect of autism. Mostly, he is over excited to make friends and be around people, he tends to be overwhelming, particularly to other children. He is also completely unaware of almost all emotions (except happiness, anger and just recently loved..aww!), which causes him to not entirely understand human interaction. I believe that one of the main reasons L is more sociable is because from day one, we raised him that way. A and I are both (mostly) people people....we love to talk (hahaha...definitely me more than A...). L has always been passed from person to person and never had a moment of stranger anxiety in his life. I always push L (gently) to do things outside of his comfort zone. I truly believe he has the potential to do whatever he wants to do. I believe in him. This makes all the difference. If I do nothing else right with this parenting gig, at the very least I can say I've always pushed L to be whatever he wants to be and to constantly try new things. I notice a lot of times, not necessarily meaning to, parents tell kids they are afraid of something or that they won't like this or that and their kids end up feeling that way. It's so easy to do this. Even with things as simple as food. I hate mushrooms but L loves them. I am not a huge seafood person, but L loves all seafood. I love that he tries new foods way better than I ever did. It's amazing how much you grow when you give your children the chance to grow as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment