THIS article is a continuation of the insightful ideas I got from covering Creo Learning Partner’s event entitled Family Forward 2018. I believe that one column is not sufficient to encapsulate the interesting insights I have acquired from this initiative. Thus, I believe that a lot of parents can truly benefit on learning from them.
In my previous column, I pointed out the importance of parents to be physically, mentally and spiritually healthy as they are critical aspects in the formation of their children. Connecting it to this point, this article will tackle about the idea of unconditional love.
Ms. Tina Zamora, a family and child psychologist, provided her audience with a very striking analogy that encapsulates her point on how parents can express unconditional love to their kids.
She used the analogy of how a passenger in an airplane having a kid should react during turbulence. As we all know, the cabin crew reminds passengers that, when these scenario happens and when the oxygen masks go down, adults are expected to wear their masks first before placing one to their child.
Initially, this might look kind of selfish to others. But Ms. Tina emphasized that “kailangan buhay ka, para mabuhay ang anak mo.”
Filipino parents are naturally altruistic. They are usually programmed to support their child first. As such they make sure that they give everything for their kids. But at times, in the process, they forget themselves. In some areas, this may work. But I believe that it will come to a point that parenting becomes more of an obligation wherein the more essential aspects of building a family may be forgotten.
Sometimes parents get tired or worse feel empty. This happens because at times their family life has blurred their authentic and genuine identities as they were too focused in making sure that their family is okay.
Thus, Ms. Tina emphasized that loving yourself first is not at all selfish. In fact, she proposes that one should have unconditional love for themselves as parents first. As she claimed, “your love tank must be filled so that you would be able to dispense love to your child.”
These realities reminded me of why a lot of adults when I was growing up are always telling us not to enter into a relationship at a very young age. Our loving must be mature before people gets included in a relationship more so with kids involved.
At the same time, these points made me realize that our generosity should never deprive us of our own happiness. Thus, I am inviting parents to perhaps think about what good to do for themselves this weekend either alone or with spouses, and then make it happen.