To What Extent Would You Allow Being A Parent To Rule Your Life?

Concerns for the kids / nytimes.com

To what extent you allow being a parent to control your life goes a long way in making you what you eventually become and how you are likely to end your life.

For sure you weren't born married with kids just as you are now...there was a time when you had none of them around you; like husband, wife or the the children, all you had then is your life, and your life didn't come to an end because of not having all the people you have now around you. It all depends to what extent you would allow being a parent to take over your life.

Now that you are probably married and with the children to look after, do you still care to have your once admirable lifestyles, living without the disturbances of the kids pulling you from all corners, making it look like you would be gone any moment spent without the children?

Let me tell you one secret, you both have your life to live independent of each other and the earlier you know this as a parent the better freer you become as a person!

If you allow being a parent take over your entire life, you would end up a lonely man or woman because you would be confused when the kids finally leave home..

Some couples quickly forget that there were once without the kids and as soon as they have their first child, they mistakenly allow the sheer feelings of being a parent to eat deep into their relationships with their mates thereby creating some unnecessary strains in their love life.

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 Before you let this turn into a big problem in your relations, can you still remember the last time you had a meal without the children? Spent an evening with friends away from the children, what about those happy hours you whiled away without the ever sticky and wonderful kids of yours?

Didn't you do and enjoy so many things together as a couple before they came along, and now that they are here, is your life to be cut short because of them?

You would certainly be doing doing yourself a great disservice by building your entire life around giving birth to and being with the children all round the clock.

Reasons Why You Have To Put Some Limits On The Time You Spend With Your Kids

The children must definitely be on their own one day and have their life to live. The training should start right now that you are still living with them, so once in a while, act as if you are not there because you re' surely going to be without them in some certain points in time.

Temporarily acting as if you are not there / lifehacks.org

Allowing the kids to feel your absence helps them to act out those principles you had spent time imparting in them and that also helps you to rejuvenate and get yourselves as parents back in order.

 Again, if you give the impression that your kids are your entire life, you would both be loaded with huge amount of pressures.

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The reason being that your kids would for all times laden with the feelings of having to make sure that anything they 'll ever do, bears your imprints; that automatically debars them from living a life of their own because they would for all times be in a cage as it were.

 On the other hand, the parents would for all times keep monitoring every moves  that their children make and in a situation like this, neither the parents nor the children are allowed to really live because they are always watching and being watched.

No matter what, the children need to have a life of their own and it's non-negotiable! if they don't experience living without you at some points in the whole of their formative years, it would be extremely difficult for them to have their own lives as adults.

So it's about mixing it all; sometimes having interests on things that doesn't have anything to do with being a parent such as going on holidays without the kids, hanging out with your friends and doing other things that interests you as couples away from the kids.

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 In all of these however, great cares must be exercised so that it doesn't look as if one is abdicating his responsibilities stylishly thereby shifting it to other relatives as it were. The point here is for the parents to draw the lines between being a parent and not overdoing things on the process.

Avoiding Both Of The Extremes

Parents no doubt owe a great deal of time to their children and this is very good for their upbringing because time spent with your kids enables them to grow up well rounded as responsible adults, but when you dedicate your whole being to doing this, you end up making them overly dependent on you for life.

Spending quality time with the kids / onion.com

While it is also true that you don't have to spend all your time being that ever caring mother or father, enough cares should also be taken not to take them for granted, reasoning that they could always survive without you...what if they, the parents, dies, won't the kids find their ways in life and survive anyhow? Some may reason, but this is another extremes that should be avoided.

Making adequate plans for your children to experience living without you helps them to live their lives in preparations for the realities of the days to come when they would have to live on their own and make their own choices without your interference.

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Becoming a parent doesn't mean that your life should change completely while you turn a different person entirely, no! it's not easy, but for the sake of making things easy for yourselves as parents, build your lives around each other as husband and wife and remember that the children are here today but would surely be on their own tomorrow probably with their own families while you turn back to how you started, husband and wife.

Now tell me, what happens if you had completely locked yourselves away for the past 18-20 years giving birth to and training those kids that are now away from you?

It is just as simple as that, if you spent your whole life being a parent just because you a parent, when your kids finally leave home after some years, you won't know what to do with yourself either as a single parent or as a couple.

Do Not Ignore Your Partner While Training Your Kids

Though some points concerning this subtopic has been touched some where inside the main article but it's important that more clarifications are made to it because parents are also people with feelings and not to be taken for granted.

 In spite of how this practical truths are presented to the people in general, much preferences are always given to the welfare of the children even if the parents are to die, the safeties of the kids takes precedence over that of their parents as the following experience shows:

There was an accident which claimed the lives of almost the whole family, and among the victims was a daughter of a relative.......

When this sad news was broken to the mother of the girl, the woman, thinking that her husband was among the victims because he wanted to go with them in the car but later had an alternative, the said woman could not be comforted as she wailed uncontrollably for her husband, but when she sighted her husband coming to meet her, she couldn't believe her eyes because she thought that the man had died. But knowing that her husband is alive gave her enough consolations even though she lost her 14-year-old daughter along with other 4 relatives.

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Her reactions made so many people to wonder of what type of woman she is, that was so much concerned for her husband whom she wasn't all that attached with, instead of crying for her 14-year old daughter. This was her reply to them, though not immediately:

"You people don't know what it feels like to loose a husband even if you don't have the best of relations with him, he s' still your husband. Love brought us together and that love was strong enough for us to have children who would one day leave us and go on to live their own lives; it's just unfortunate that this accident happened making our lovely daughter to leave in a painful way but I still take courage that my husband is with me". Even the husband was deeply touched by that sorrowful and heart touching remarks of his wife.


"You loved this person enough to have children with him or her" To me, that's a serious commitment not to be toyed with. The person you had babies with under normal circumstances should be the most important person in your life.

Get Stronger As A Couple Not Just As Parents

Get stronger as a couple and not just as parents because this person, to some greater extents means a whole lot to you and you have had so much in common to the extent that not even that cutest of infant baby could replace. Being a strong parent starts from how strong a couple usually is.

 This person (your spouse) may take less efforts to cater for and demands little of your time, but he or she is still the number one in your life. The best and irreplaceable!

Stronger couple / thetimes.co.uk

 The time spent training the children no doubt would put some strains on the good relations that a couple has for themselves, but the knowledge that it's going to be between two of you when the children leave home, should be enough reason why you would not allow anything to unduly affect your concerns for each other.

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 If parents live exemplary love life before their children, it will free them up to explore their own lives and search out for no other person than the one they could be happy with just like their parents when the time comes.

Look for ways to do some practical things that could make your love stronger for each other even while training your kids. Take some tours away from the kids and let it serve the purpose.

 As you go exploring places of interests, you may not bother yourselves buying things for the kids or discussing unnecessarily about them during this time out with your partner.

 Have yourselves and be yourselves. We love our kids enough to have them but such love shouldn't be without some necessary limits because we loved ourselves as couples even before bringing them along the line.

Two of you started the journey after all / brides.com

 We are parents yes, but being parents doesn't mean that we have to expend all our lives babysitting our children to the extent that when they finally leave home we turn strangers to ourselves instead of the lovely couples that we were even before we started having them.

 To what extent you allow being a parent to rule your life goes a long way in making you what you eventually become and how you are likely to end your life.

This is in the series of Effective Parenting Techniques
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