A Little Piece of an Iceberg
On October 2, 2019 an iceberg—named D-28—broke off the Amery Ice Shelf in Antarctica. Its size was impressive, 600 square miles—equivalent to 27 Manhattans—and 700 feet thick, weighing in at 600 trillion pounds.
Very few people were even aware of it, and we might be tempted to think that despite the size, it was insignificant compared to the total ice of Antarctica, with an area of 5.4 million square miles—the size of the United States and Mexico combined—and an average ice thickness of 1.4 miles. Taken in perspective, the iceberg was just one small piece.
True, D-28 was a small piece, but these “small pieces” are breaking off with greater frequency in Antarctica, Greenland, and other places in the world. On one recent DAY, 20 trillion pounds of ice melted in Greenland alone.
If this continues—and I make no political comment here about greenhouse gases—the sea levels will rise. That’s just a scientific fact. It is projected that by the year 2100—only a single lifetime away—sea levels could easily rise 6.5 feet, which would flood the homes of as many as 200 million people worldwide.
If that occurs—and I am not being a prophet of climate doom here—people will ask how such a thing could have happened. It happened because of events like D-28, a small piece, breaking off an ice shelf in Antarctica.
The Effect of "Little" Things and a Parent's Responsibility
My comment here, however, is not about ice or sea levels. It’s about the effects of “little” things”—many utterly insignificant by themselves—accumulating and synergizing to cause later disasters. We see this happen with our children.
A child fails to do his homework. We do nothing. By itself this failure may have no visible or immediate consequence, but when repeated it quickly becomes a pattern and attitude of irresponsibility, complacency, and entitlement, and those conditions are crippling.
A child whines for something he wants, and we give it to him. Short-term effect? The child stops whining, and we’re actually relieved.
But that single act contributes to the likelihood of the next episode of whining, and before long we have a child who whines and complains all the time, and who has an attitude of total victimhood.
In his world everything is unfair, so he searches for and demands solutions to come from other people, from those monsters who have mistreated him. Such a child becomes helpless and has no sense of worth—a living death.
A Parent's Real Responsibility
As parents we must be diligently aware of the “small things.” But how can we watch everything? How can we monitor every “small piece” that breaks off the ice shelf? Let’s simplify. Our real responsibility is to love and teach, rather than be policemen on the lookout for infractions.
As we focus on this primary responsibility, we’ll simply be aware of anything that is not consistent with a child feeling loved, or being loving and responsible. It is those three attitudes and behaviors that naturally produce a happy child, and we need only be diligent about observing deviations from that path.
As we do, we will create the happy environment we want for our children, rather than scurrying about in the futile effort to keep every small piece of ice from breaking off.
