Raising Children

I have raised three children to what I consider successful adulthood. That doesn't make me an expert but after all my children taught me, I am closer than when I started. My docter advised me against breast feeding. He said something on the order of, "You don't want to go through all that. It just isn't necessary these days." It was only after all three of mine were past the baby stage that I came to see the convenience of breast milk instantly available as opposed to braving a chilly kitchen in the middle of the night or in the early morning, holding a crying baby, waiting for a bottle to heat. And that isn't even taking into account the added nutritional value. I started out thinking infants should not be allowed to cry. If they cried, there was something wrong. After hours, days and weeks of rocking, walking and jiggling in order to get my first baby to sleep, I finally realized that all I was accomplishing with my efforts was to keep him agitated and awake. He taught me that all I needed to do was feed him, cuddle and rock him a little, then put him in his bed. He would cry for a short time, then fall asleep. What frustration preceeded this lesson for both of us. I also had a firm picture of what was expected of the "ideal" wife and mother. I tried to be her. This came to be known as "50s Housewife Syndrome." There was much guilt and frustration until I finally relaxed into a somewhat normal person. Long years later I can see the wisdom in Kahlil Gibron's words about children:

Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of life's longing for itself. They come through you but are not of you, and though they are with you yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward, nor tarries with yesterday.

I live in a different world than that in which my parents lived, now my children live in a different world than mine, and so on... and so on...