There comes a time in a man's life (approximately 5.30pm) when he will sit back and comtemplate his life and take stock of how it has turned out. Did it turn out the way he wanted it to or was it all flushed down the main sewers of life. Most of the time, its the sewers because when we thought up how our lives would turn out, we were based it on books, TV and parents. I don't know about you but my parents weren't exactly the brightest sunshine Mary Poppins type. One step or word out of place and somebody gonna get a hurt real bad!
Also when we were doing this thinking back then, it was pretty obvious that it was based on a lot of fictional stuff. So recently I having such thoughts and my thoughts centered around this particular topic. At this moment, I have to say, my biggest success are my kids.
They are far from perfect....not even close! But they are good enough for me. So I started thinking about when did I first entertain the thoughts of having children? I love kids. I always have and I always will. To put a proviso, I do draw the line when it comes to those screaming, yelling, rolling the floor kids that you see at the mall. Those parents should be taken to a correctional facility run by Nazi-like soldiers and put through a jungle style survival for as long as it takes so that they can come back and whoop their kids!!!
I digress....I do that a lot.
Melissa and I thought about having our first child when we were into the 6 month of our marriage. It was the worse time of our marriage but it was also the best. We were having a lot of problems of coping with marriage. I felt I dove into it too early and she was feeling insecure. A note to newly weds. If you are thinking of getting married early, pls make sure you are ready to give up your new found freedom and be ready to share everything. Give time to yourselves to find each other.
It was horrid as we had fights a lot and mistrust. It was also the best because it forced us out into the open and we had a very long discussion and came to a strong realization of what we were doing to ourselves, our marriage and to each other. So that made our marriage strong. After finding our new found selves, we were like new dating couples again and that was when we talked about it.
We talked about how many we would have. I wanted 8 but I guess it was a wee bit unfair of me to make that statement since I wasn't doing the pregnancy. So we settled on 2 regardless of the sex of our children. After that we will decide if we want more when the time comes.
There was also the discussion on how we would bring our children up. So we looked at families and realized that our generation are VERY (you know I am excited when I think in capital letters) VERY liberal with their children today. I don't know if there is a corelation to that and the fact we have higher crime rates, more mat rempits and more talk shows.
While I don't want to be my parents when it comes to discipline, I too didn't want my children to turn out like Children of the Damned of Damien from Omen or Linda Blair from Exorcist. I certainly don't want people commenting that my kids were badly brought up. So we have a difficult task of balancing sterness and understanding. I too wanted to be a cool dad where my kids can hang out with me and talk to me but at this moment, they are too young for me to tell if that's happening.
My only hope is to point them in the direction I think best fits the situation and pray they turn out fine. After all, I turned out with minimal defects.
No comments:
Post a Comment