We can protect our children from emotional earthquakes by learning to love and teach, putting reinforcing steel and concrete into the foundations, walls, and ceilings of their lives.
Timestamps:
00:00 Collapsed buildings from earthquake due to ignoring rules and recommendations.
04:14 We need to recognize that we caused most of the pain in our children's lives.
05:18 Protect them from emotional earthquakes by changing your life with the parenting training.
Transcript:
Only months ago an earthquake in Haiti collapsed more than 60,000 buildings. On some roads not a single building survived intact. More than 2000 people died.
Ignoring Advice Caused Devastating Destruction
There’s nothing novel about earthquakes or the damage they cause, but this one was so very preventable. Only eleven years before, another earthquake had killed almost a quarter of a million people in the same country, again crushed to death under the rubble of collapsed buildings.
Many of the world’s top engineering experts descended on the Caribbean nation to help. The World Bank published scores of technical reports on how to prevent another disaster and charities taught local companies ways to improve cinder blocks and other construction materials—like reinforcing steel bars. The government introduced a new building code in 2012 and created a Technical Bureau for Buildings.
But people largely ignored all the advice and help. Their attitude is typified in a recent interview with one grandmother huddled under a plastic sheet near her destroyed home, explaining why she and her two grandchildren were outside in the rain. She said they had ignored building permits and saved some money by building their home more cheaply.
Now, I am NOT criticizing anybody who is scraping by and has difficulty even building a shelter for themselves. I understand. I’ve built many things of wood, concrete, cinder block, and reinforcing steel.
And I do know that leaving out the materials to make something more earthquake resistant might save 10-15% in initial building costs, but the price of ignoring these strengthening materials can be catastrophic, as they discovered in Haiti.
In some cases, buildings fell because the owners had saved FIVE percent by omitting steel, or adding too much water to the concrete, or using sand contaminated by other materials.
So if they were strapped for cash, they could have built smaller, or waited longer. Again, no criticism.
Protecting Our Children from Emotional Earthquakes
The point is that we human beings do not think ahead about the consequences of our choices. That’s obvious in an earthquake.
It’s less obvious in our personal lives. We ignore the day-to-day choices about whether to be truthful and loving—mostly in ignorance.
We ignore the little transgressions and attitudes of our children, and then we’re surprised when events—emotional and spiritual—cripple or destroy them and us.
What can we do? We can begin to recognize that WE CAUSED most of the pain in our lives. Mostly we didn’t know better, but we still caused it, and the real lesson is that now we can learn how to prevent those catastrophes.
We can learn to love and teach, putting reinforcing steel and concrete into the foundations and walls and ceilings of our children’s lives. We can protect them from earthquakes.
So let’s do that and quit saving on building materials. Let’s stop ignoring the mini-quakes and the guidance and instruction available to us.
Let’s stop looking for the cheap and easy way to plant seeds and just hope they turn out all right.
We can avoid most of the destruction that later we claim is puzzling or unavoidable. Right now you’re taking a course in emotional and spiritual engineering, construction, and the use of concrete and rebar as you’re devouring this Parenting Training.
Congratulations. Nice work. You’ll be prepared.
