Can Our Children Think For Themselves?
It is nothing new for parents to influence their children’s decisions or to flat out make them. This has been happening for many, many years, and will probably never stop. Parents often think they know what is best for their children, or don’t want their children to make the same mistakes they did. When actually the children need to live a less sheltered life and learn from their own mistakes and the mistakes of their parents. By parents thinking for or making the decisions for their children it will cause some type of distance or resentment between parent and child.
My father is a perfect example of this type of decision making and influencing for his children. My father grew up wanting to become an architect, but because all his brothers went to medical school and became doctors, his father made him abandon his dream and follow his brothers’ footsteps to fulfill the family dream. Later on in life he raised his brother -in-law, Uncle Joe. Uncle Joe looked up to my father and wanted to follow in his footsteps to become a doctor. Instead, my father made him become an architect! It was now as if my father was trying to live his dreams through my uncle. The same thing happened with my older brother, Carlos. He too wanted to be like our father; a doctor. Instead, our father influenced him to become a bio-medical engineer.
Parents will even go as far as choosing what extra curricular activities their children participate in. I have seen several parents enroll their daughters in cheerleading or dance and their sons in basketball or football. They do not seem to care what their children really want or what they truly are passionate about. For instance, a really good friend of mine, Jill, put her eight year old daughter in cheerleading, because that is what she did growing up and thought her daughter would love it as much as she did. Her daughter really did enjoy cheerleading but not as much as she wanted to play...