What will your Sponge-Child soak up from your parenting?

When we come into this world, we have only our parents to show us just how the world works. We quickly learn what actions are acceptable, and which aren't.

The majority of our parents really do want to impart healthy information to their descendants. After all, those kids will be their link to the future of their genes in the centuries ahead.

However, I would venture to say that it's also the majority of us that mess up to some degree. Maybe we let our child cry him or herself to sleep because we don't want to spoil the child.

Maybe we tell him or her to shut up, or criticize them that they'll never amount to anything. There are times when we parents may become self-absorbed with our own problems. Maybe we'll argue about sex or money within hearing of our children.

Or we may criticize each other in front of the kids. All of these actions and a myriad of others leave huge imprints on our innocent children.

Before we know it, our children are adults, with sexual or financial hang-ups themselves. Their relationships may be threatened because our children are carrying on wounds that we may have inflicted without our knowledge.

Now I'm not saying that a one-time argument with your spouse around your kids will ruin the lives of your children forever. No, but this kind of thing happening more often than not, even as little as once every couple weeks, can cause our children to carry into adulthood preconceived negative ideas about the opposite sex, the need to keep your mouth shut rather than calling a wrong a wrong, the fear of not pleasing people, of being criticized. Our little child doesn't put away childish thoughts and habits. No, these childhood "wounds" become ingrained in that child as he or she takes on the responsibilities and freedoms of an adult.

Many of us adults have found ourselves unable to accept either praise or criticism. We are afraid of our bosses and of all authoritarian figures. We know as adults we won't be slapped or spanked. We won't be sent to bed without supper, but sometimes we would rather have these punishments instead of living day in and day out in fear of being abandoned, of being laughed at or talked about, of being unchosen.

It is a very very difficult job to be a parent. We can't always show our fears and displeasures to our young children. We shouldn't loose our tempers around them. We shouldn't drink or eat too much around them. We shouldn't ignore our episodes of depression or anxiety.

Remember, our little ones are like little sponges. Whether we like it or not, they soak up the good and the bad in our lives, and all of that either gives them true hope and freedom as adults, or they continue to swish around in the dirt and slime they carried through the years in that sponge we call a brain.

My parents had too many children. Many of us lived with neglect, were lacking of necessary supplies, but most of all, we were not able to be cuddled, loved, or stroked by adoring parents. When it came time for me to have my family, I carried the same mistakes I had learned from my parents into the lives of my children.

I only hope they will have time for their children, that they will transfer a sense of awe and wonder to their children. I hope they will show them the power of love, the warmth of touch, the beauty of a smile, the thrill of a job well done.

Get yourself a sponge before you get yourself a kid. Then teach yourself (so much that it becomes second nature to you) that your job will be to be sure that your child will soak up only the good stuff.

Your reward a couple decades later? Another able, confident and happy parent, now making that chain more secure for the generations that will follow.

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