DEALING WITH PARENTING STRESS; MOVING FROM PASSION TO POWER. part 1.
I Often ask caregivers ; teachers, teen coach, parents, and faith based youth handlers on what informed their strong decision and desire to want to work around the child; expected the answer has always been yes roundly coined in a phrase; ‘I am just passionate about kids, I love them around me…… I hear this and other emotional responses just to suggest that being around kids is natural to us. That’s cool though.
You see the pursuit of passion alone to impact one’s world effectively is never the problem but how effective is the flame of passion as to the positive delivery on the job of parenting at hand. Every parent/adult is laced with the passion which is developed overtime to train kids to succeed in life, right from conception; to when the child is born, up till when he/she grows to eighteen. The primary responsibility of feeding, total child safety, shelter, quality education, and mentoring, is exclusively placed on shoulder of parents in this part of the world. No parents want to joke with this onerous task. Albeit permit me to expound briefly how passion can damage and make ineffective of our good intention in parenting if left untrained.
Passion as defined by Wikipedia is a feeling of intense enthusiasm towards or compelling desire for someone or something.
By this definition; passion has no boundary, being passionate about something or someone which is boundless can be sometimes dangerous because from its chilling soft ground creeps out impatience, close-mindedness, unreceptive, hostility, unteachable, greed, anger, retaliation, cruelty, suspicion, jealousy, brute forces , selfishness, and sometimes unreasoning impulses.
Passion is a moving consuming fire , the flame wouldn’t stop until it reduces itself to a heap of revolting ashes in the lives of parents and kids.
Passion deprives parents of their peace by making them suspect every move of children, it conditions parents mind to either cave and give in to the tantrum of the child or pounce on the child in the open just because of the bystanders effect and not necessarily to provide positive response to the issue at hand and will sometimes blindfold you to see the problem beyond the child.
The untrained flame of Passion breeds doubt and uncertainty in your relationship with kids such that it will make you feel worthless as a parent before the bystanders and you’d have to deal with the dirty looks, snide remarks, or other derisive comments of other adults thereby heaping more pressure on you, so also is your ability to seek relevant knowledge diminishes as the number of distractions increases.
Passion saps you creativity needed to support the child to overcome certain excesses with a view to helping nurture them and provide positive role models.
From scientific perspective, passion and emotion do not have the capacity to understand consequences and backlash of its wierd action. This is why we still see some kids appear unreceptive, cold, and hostile to their parents in spite of their positive disposition towards making them turn out better.
I see passionate mothers and fathers who easily operate solely from the realm of the deeper EMOTION, and by attendant staggering burdens this has placed on them many parents are on the brink of throwing the towel for they to have found parenting as more of a job and less of a joy. This is what untrained passion does to you. It has a penchant for bringing out the worst in parents.
Passion veils parents from seeing today’s children as different from children of 40 years ago with reference to divergent circumstances, experiences, and perspectives. Many parents have lost their children to outsiders due to the eruption of passion and have proportionately developed strain on the job.
The stronger your passion is , the deeper and fiercer is your temptation towards selfishness, egocentric, and entitlement mentality. But to prevent one from drifting to the region of appalling helplessness one must know when to draw a line between passion and wisdom; a person of passion is most eager to put others right , but a person of wisdom first puts himself right. My candid advice to parents.
The entire facade of passion will crumble before any parent who latches on emotion to parent a child for the reason that passionate parent seeks to put kids right, but wisdom demands that passion is not enough to raise today’s kids, but by methodically allow our passion to go through the refining fire of processes to achieve positive engagement of kids.
We have a lot in our plate dear parent to allow passion takes the center stage. There’s rising cost of health care, education, food, and housing. We need to move on the wings of passion to productivity; from passion to power; and finally from darkness to light.
Passion in its crude state could be harmful to the bearer if not purposely converted to right solutions; it is like a moving water, it could be damned and controlled for a moment, but eventually, it will force an outlet. This is true of passion. Inability of parents to channel its energy into some creative efforts that will better their parenting journey will on its own create a physical outlet which may ultimately lead to all forms of abuses on the child and also put unavoidable stress on parents in the name of parenting.
One of the easiest ways to overcome parenting stress caused by passion is to effectively transmute its energy to bring the best out of the child. Whether we are parents, teachers, coaches, employers, or youth workers, I have FIVE critical ways on how to turn your passion to power.
1. PASSION TO POWER. Every passion has gotten innate potential of being converted to power. Show me a parent that’s transcended from being passionate to powerful, and I will tell you what knowledge has done in the life of that parents. The willpower to acquire and apply knowledge is the NOW passion , an indispensable commodity every parents must have and sell not. Please get it.
2. PASSION TO PATIENCE. Passion will drain you if it is not infused with patience. One of the best ways to do this is to detach yourself emotionally while responding to issues around the child. Your patience should grow faster than the rate of passion in you.
3. PASSION TO PURPOSE. The passion for parenting is built overtime for a purpose; to raise a child from womb unto adjusted adulthood. When you commit this to heart, our actions would then be solution-oriented, we will always act, and not react to issues around our children.
4. PASSION TO PEACE. Your passion must be subdued for peace to reign in you. This will only happen if parents are able to defeat self and focus on the child. This is when parents need fix themselves before trying to fix the child. The way of passion to peace is by purifying ourselves.
5. PASSION TO PRAYER. We cannot disdain the place of prayer in order to achieve the best result in life for us and our children. Prayer is like a proverbial plant and fertilizer; one cannot be substituted for the other. Being passionate and hardworking to parent without prayer will open our precious children to negative elements that will dwarf their potentials. Also prayer without purposeful hardwork is just a self tickling exercise. The two must go together.
Please let us create virile outlets for our passion for parenting to be beneficial to us, the child, and the society.
Thank you.
Akinropo Akinola
CEO, Parenmark school of parenting
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