Lesson on parenting: you can’t teach what you don’t know
Disclaimer: there are some people that became parents as teenagers and they have a done a great job raising their children…
However, the reality is that most teenagers that are getting pregnant and fathering babies today don’t know anything about the world and even less about themselves. Yes, that is tragic for their lives but it is even more tragic for the children they are creating.
When I was in my early 20s, my brother started bugging me about having a baby. He feared that I was getting too old to have children. Because of the alarming rate of teenage pregnancy in our area at the time, he believed that most children were the result of high school pregnancies. Here’s what I told him:
I can not be a good parent until I have learned something about the world and about myself. I need to make a few mistakes and learn from them so that I will have something to teach my children. If I don’t know anything about my self or about the world around me, what life lessons will I have to pass on to someone else, aside from “don’t grow up to be like me”. My goal as a parent is to be an example for my child.
The part of being a parent that sucks most is being able to foresee the problems that your children are going to have in the future based on the decisions they are making today. When I was younger, I could not understand how my parents and grandparents were almost like psychics. They seemed to always be able to predict what was coming next. *If you ____________, then ____________ is going to happen.* I couldn’t figure out where they were getting all of this from but sure enough, when I did “X”, “Y” was soon to follow. Once I began a parent, in my late 20′s, I realized that it was because they had been there, done the same thing and had a scar/story to prove it.
I wish I could sprinkle fairy dust on our teenagers and help them to realize that yes, it is easy to conceive and birth a child. The hard part is being able to teach those kids something about themselves and about life because you can’t teach what you don’t know…
My son became a father when he was only 20 years old but he was an exception to the rule. He made countless mistakes and learned from all of them. The birth of my grandson was the motivating factor that caused him to take responsibility for his own life and the life of his family. I agree with your thinking that in the majority of cases, teens don’t know about the world or themselves. We have been blessed that our circumstances have had positive results!
You and your family are very blessed. This post was inspired by a 9th grade male who impregnated an 11th grade female. I just can’t help but wonder about their futures and the future of their child.
To be honest I got pregnant when I was 19 and had my daughter when I was 20 but I was very mature for my age and had a lot experience with kids. I’m not going to stay that I was ready for the responsiblity of being a parent but my hold world change because my focus stop being on me and started being about my kid. My mother was very supportive in the process of me learning how to parent my daughter. Don’t get me wrong she did not take over my responsibility, like some girls mother do when they have child at early age. My mother assisted in the process. I was going into my junior year of college and she made clear to me that she would not be able to care for my child while I was away at school. She made me take responsiblity for my child and I did not have a problem with it at all because she was my daughter. To be honest I think that was the best thing she ever could have done for me because it made stay focus on my responsiblity and graduate from college on time because I had child to take care of. Today I can say that I’m doing a good job raising my almost 13 year daughter, I’m married to her father and I have master degree. I have learn many life lesson that I share with my daughter who thinks I’m crazy and don’t know anything, but what I can I say I used to feel the same way about my mother until I became a mom and understand that she did know what she was talking about.