Kids Don’t Come with Manuals

Anyone can go to IKEA and purchase a bed, cabinets, shelving, desks, chairs, or any home ware you can think about. They come with a very crude manual. Just a few pictures and images that layout the steps to put the furniture together. Even though the directions are limited you can still put it together with minimal frustration.

Anyone can have a kid. There’s no law that prevents someone from having a kid. There’s no test to pass or form to fill out. So when you find out you are having a kid, what do you do? I freaked out a bit. “What do I do? Where do I go? How do I do this?” are all questions I asked. Part of this is relying on our past to make the best decisions. Now some of our pasts we’re great and others of us didn’t have a great experience growing up but the best part – we get to write our own history.

When it comes to our kids we emulate the things that were awesome and we try to change the things we hated, or at least I try to. Coming from the education world, there were kids who did lived in poverty or low income and I tried to get them to be better than where they came from. They didn’t have to have the same outcome as their parents or grandparents and they could be better. At least I tried to convey that. I only taught for a year so maybe I wasn’t very good.

So we do the good things well and the bad things better but what happens when we see ourselves falling off the rails? I know I am guilty at this. I try hard each day and each day I see myself doing the same crap that is detrimental to my children. Where is the manual to correct course? Where is the training I need to be better? The answer lies in books. I am reading “Good Inside” by Dr. Becky Kennedy. This is my instruction manual, or at least one of them.

The power of books is what I use to be better when I know I have things to work on. Am I perfect each day after reading? Absolutely…not. But the idea is to work it like a muscle. If we work our patience muscle and our sincerity muscle each day we will become more patient and more sincere. The book is the vehicle to take us there. We do what we can with what we have but reading a book or learning from other parents we find ourselves getting better the more we immerse ourselves in it.