A teacher and Parent Perspective

A Teacher and Parent Perspective

I wrote this impetuously one weekend after an interview with a parent who really didn't care about her child who I was teaching at the time. He was a behavioural problem with many issues through lack of attention, basic needs and love. 

     I read a most inspirational essay by "Journey Woman" (another writer) recently and it motivated me to write my own.

     Why is it that people have children? There are several reasons that I can envisage. There are far more than I have written here, I am sure.

     We have children to fulfil a need to complete ourselves as humans. Procreation is part of the natural history and evolution of any species. In our case, it is part of the human race. To share our lives with another is a natural and basic need. Is this still the case?

     Others have children to help with the budget. Sounds contemptuous, but it is true in several cases. Many people in this day and age are in economic crises due to inefficient government management or uneconomical extravagance with addictions to drugs, alcohol and gambling. Many are in disastrous predicaments just getting through a day with enough food and drink to survive.

     Some folks have children to supplement their financial plan. Is this fair? Maybe, as long as they can fulfil each and every one of those children's emotional and physical needs. What is not fair is when they do this just  when they feel like it. Children have needs consistently, from conception onward.

     Asking too much? If you choose to have children, it is par for the course of bringing another human life into this world. Just like preparing food. You don't stop preparing a meal in the middle of everything, you finish it. Food has expiry dates, and will ruin if left unattended. Children, do not have expiry dates unless their lives are inconceivably and abruptly ended.

     However, they can and will likely become damaged if there is no one present to listen, watch, or participate in every area of their life.

     I hear some of you say, "They have their father/mother, grandparents, friends, siblings, teachers, neighbours. They have plenty of people who care for them." These are their significant others. They are influential and supportive individuals in a child's life. They are not their original and primary carer unless, of course they need to care for a child that is in danger at the home in which they are conceived.

     The parent(s) are those who have the principal responsibility of caring for a child. They will possibly be doing the same for them one day when they are elderly or become the dependent adult.

     Many have unplanned or accidental pregnancies. Another human life enters into an unexpected and unprepared household. With so many birth control alternatives available these days, should this even happen? Of course it does. When this happens, how do people deal with it? They continue the pregnancy or they terminate it. Harsh? There is no alternative they can foresee.

     There are those couples who have child after child and assume their own parents, the child's grandparents, will take the responsibility and bring them up. Is this a fair thing to expect? Some of those grandparents are happy to do this, but there are also others that are given little choice in the matter.

     One of the reasons, is they cannot stand to see an innocent child miss out on the basic care and needs imperative to their soul. Others become the carer because the primary parent works full time and they don't want to see their daughters or sons who have had the child, miss out. Others do this to help their own children that need to work to provide for their grandchildren. Of course there are a percentage that are given the "do it or else" attitude because they are not strong enough to say "No" to their own children.

     What ever the reason, who is the one that is mostly affected? The children are the victims who see things going on around them and believe it to be "the way it is supposed to be." If they have never seen the options available to them or been given the opportunity to try them. Is this really fair?