First, let’s define what parenting or child rearing is.

It is the process of promoting and supporting the physical, emotional, social, financial, and intellectual development of a child from infancy to adulthood. Some people aspire to jobs, like those of a doctor, a teacher, a carpenter, a football or basketball player, etc.

For parents, the task of caring for a child falls upon them with the birth of their first child, and most parents know that it is a lot of work from morning to bedtime. It is actually more than just a job; it’s a profoundly beautiful and fulfilling vocation, but it can also become complicated and exhausting.

Aside from the tasks directly associated with being a parent (e.g. feeding the children, providing for their needs, watching over them, staying up when they are sick, providing for their school needs, and many other things), we also need to relate with our children as individual persons. This can be quite challenging.

First, every child has his or her own personality and tendencies. Second, we all have our own beliefs and feelings that we have the right to teach our children what we believe is good for them. Third, there are no schools to teach the art of parenting.

Fourth, different experiences that children go through, even in the womb, in infancy and in every stage of their lives can influence their characters, the way they deal with others, and their responses to situations.

While parents naturally want the best for their children, many children, owing to different circumstances, grow up with prejudices against their parents, or deviate from what their parents want, and may sometimes end up in trouble.

However, although a person can always go against the teachings and values imparted by his parents, there is less chance of one’s going down the wrong path when he has been educated towards what is good. May we suggest some parenting ideas:

1. Remove your own prejudices about your child’s character. No child has a bad character. Each has his or her own personality, and when they mature, they can grow up to be responsible members of society. For example, a little girl who is timid when relating to others, if well supported, guided, and not reprimanded for her shyness, can turn out to be a caring woman for others.
2. In a parent-child relationship, everyone is right. So, in our relationships with our children or with anyone, we should always look for the reason or motivation of an action. This helps us develop humility— a very important value in education.
3. It is also important to allow children to make mistakes. In this way, we help them understand that what is important is not so much that we are perfect and self confident, but that parents are all humans and committed to the task of educating and of mutual learning until the end. To do this, each parent should feel that their children are not so much their own, but are rather beloved persons who have been entrusted to them. In other words, they can foster an atmosphere of love and forgiveness so that each child could grow, as sunlight lets the plant grow by itself. The life of the child is ultimately a gift from the Creator and does not belong to the parents.In his classic book The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran wrote: “Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.”
4. There is no perfect parent. As parents, we, too, can make mistakes and fail. When this happens, we should also be ready to ask for forgiveness from our own children and start over again, together with them. In this way, the parent-child relationship is not one where the parent commands and the child obeys, but instead, it becomes a journey undertaken together.
5. In our neighborhoods or circles, we can organize a “school” for parents or a regular get-together in which several parents can come together, learn from each other and grow together in the beautiful vocation of parenthood.
6. Finally, let us always pray for our children and entrust them to God, for they belong to him in the first place. As parents, we can only do so much in a fast-changing world, a world which we ourselves may not always understand and know how to deal with. But God always knows what to do, and if we put our children in the hands of God who is a Father, the Parent par excellence, then we can be at peace.

Perhaps, you have experienced this… Your kid may have just thrown the biggest tantrum on planet Earth, but when he looks up at you with his shining eyes and toothy grin, you fall head-first into that gushy cloud of kid-love that has helped the human race move forward for millennia.

It’s a kind of twisted but beautiful joke that only parents can understand. That heart-swelling, earth-shattering, all-consuming love for your kids is what creates the challenges of parenting, yet that’s what makes it all worthwhile. It’s the reason of your woes, but also the cure for them. It’s a force that can drive you to near-madness, yet a balm that can soothe your battered heart.

Love makes parenting tougher, but it also renders it easier.

Ezio Aceti, Jenni Bulan, Ann Pasa, Frances Orian, and Fr. Am Mijares