Parents know how to live a happy life, only happy children

Continuing the topic Parents and children overcome life pressureauthor Luu Dinh Long sent to VietNamNet the following article:

Every parent loves their child. This is a thousand-year-old moral and is also a gift parents give to their children, throughout since the child entered the mother’s womb. Of course, there are also unusual exceptions, but really, loving your child is also a parent’s enjoyment. The problem is how to love so that love becomes a gift for children and enjoyment for parents…

Understand and love

I had the privilege to listen to a Dharma lecture by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh when he first returned to Vietnam (2005), he talked about the love and bond between parents and children. According to Zen master, there are many people who love but do not understand their children, so they create pressure on their children.

Don’t understand because you don’t listen to me. Most parents often use “rights” as parents to set too many demands for their children to do. From a young age, when a child was born, he “asked” him to eat healthy and grow faster than other people. When your children go to school, let them carry their own dreams – to be the best in school, to be consistent in all subjects, and to always have high scores.

When I grow up, I hope I have a lover, get married with a life partner like this, that, according to the standards of my parents, even the extended family. Then the son or grandchild must follow the family line, forcing their children to shoulder all kinds of responsibilities, sometimes regardless of whether they are capable or not.

I once heard the confession of a friend who is the only son of a family: “I was born as a 3rd gender, belonging to the LGBT community, but I don’t dare to live true to myself. I’m afraid my parents will be sad, and if my parents know my true gender, they will think this is a shame… of the family.”

And you have lived with that fear and pressure for the past 35 years. When you go to Ho Chi Minh City to study and have a job, you are afraid to return to your hometown, not because you don’t love your hometown and miss your parents, but because every time you come back, you hear the urge to talk about your wife and children, listen to nagging, and compare it with Ty and Teo. near the house.

Few parents ask their children if they are happy going to school, but only know about grades and always pressure their children to score. It is not natural that teenage students have chosen to live disruptively or commit suicide as a solution to break free from excessive constraints from their parents.

Who is not happy when you study well and surely, if you are good, you are happy about it yourself. But it is not only desire and pressure but it is an expression, including many determining factors: self-efficacy, training, diligence in the style of “intelligent industriousness”…

However, every excellence must have an end, that is, everyone has a limit to achieve, to endure for a certain period of time.

Comparing your child to others is a way of disrespecting him and making him even more guilty. Encouraging children is not in that way but needs a word of encouragement: just try your best and be happy with the results.

If you love your child and listen to your child, then parents will probably realize what kind of emotional tendency their child has so that they can share gently: I can love anyone, as long as I’m happy.

If they are really loving, parents will certainly see the fatigue in studying and the difficulties in their children’s life so that they can explain: do you have problems at school / do you have anything to share with your parents…

Deep listening is that we can feel what the other person doesn’t say, see the invisible pressures they are carrying to sit down with them, remove and help in a gentle way, like is to sit there and be there for them like a steady shoulder.

Parents know how to live a happy life, only happy children

When we consider happiness as a gift, we will always create our own joy to give to the people we love. If our hearts are filled with worries, troubles, desires (but cannot be)… how can we help the other person be happy?

Love, if seen as a sweet giving, must be the material that creates joy for both the giver and the receiver.

The truth is, there are many parents who give their love in expecting a lot of things from their children. Creating a lot of pressure for your child is actually creating so much fatigue for yourself.

Someone said, be friends with your children in a special way. And, when it comes to being a true friend, I won’t ask for anything in return, even what I think is best for you. When you can’t be naturally good, but I “force” you to study math, physics, chemistry because it’s easy to get into today’s “hot” professions – that’s love but don’t understand – as well as when people don’t like to eat sweets that we force them to eat because it tastes good (to us) is a mistake.

Only when we understand and accept our children as they are, with all that belongs to them, can we bring joy and happiness to them.

In fact, as soon as we can let go of the notions of wishing our children to be this and that (good to their own accord), we will also have happiness. At the same time, I removed the burden that I had placed on the shoulders of children. I believe, at that time, both of them smiled and gently went through all eyes, because we already know how to look at our loved ones, understand what they need, so what is good for them.

(A word of advice from a single father with a 4-year-old son)

Luu Dinh Long