No Owner's Manual for Raising Children
I couldn’t possibly count the number of times I’ve seen parents throw up their hands at the disruptive, difficult, rude, defiant, loud, or otherwise unacceptable behavior of a child as the parent says some variation on, “Well, they don’t come with an owner’s manual, do they?”
This is always said as a form of black humor to hide the parent’s discomfort at having a child who is obviously not responding to attempts at instruction.
Although everyone in the room laughs—precisely because they have experienced similar situations—the humor reflects a kind of dark surrender to the impossibility of being a consistently loving parent who raises responsible and happy children.
I’ve personally witnessed similar attempts at such humor:
- In a hospital, where a man was sucking on a cigarette through a hole in his throat while shrugging his shoulders in a gesture meaning, “Well, at least I can smoke.”
- A recently drunk driver surveying the near-total destruction of his car in the junkyard, commenting, “Oh look, that right rear tire could still be used as a good spare.”
It’s not uncommon for us to make light of a terrible situation, distracting ourselves and others from how preventable it was, and how our ignorance led to consequences that were catastrophic. We hope that humor will somehow diminish the staggeringly foolish error in our judgment.
There IS a Manual for Raising Children
The misbehavior of a child is never funny. It’s almost always an indication of failure on our part to consistently love and teach, as well as a foreshadowing of unfathomably numerous and tragic mistakes and consequences yet to come.
We cannot afford the distraction of such humor. We need not wallow in our error either, but humor and inaction are not the way to go.
Referring back to the original quote earlier, it turns out that there IS a manual for raising children. There is a book. There is an extensive video training program with now-hundreds of hours of additional support material.
See RealLoveParents.com and RealLove.com for a consistently effective and easier way to raise children who feel loved, who are loving toward others, who are responsible, and—inevitably—happy.
