What makes you a good parent

Hello !

This is the last column in this week and we are talking about parenting, self image and subconscious work to change unwanted perception.

As you know, especially in the US, we say, “I love you.” all the time. If you are an American or in some part of western culture, it must be standard.

However you have to know that saying “I love you.” at every opportunity is not really universal standard.

When I grew up, I never heard my parents ever said that. I grew up in Japan in a really small town anyway.

However even in Tokyo, I don’t think it is standard to express love by saying it.

Probably Buddhism based culture is very different from Christianity based ones though of course I know Christianity culture including Catholic or other religions and we can’t conclude anything just based on any religion and culture either.

Having said that without any judgments of saying right or wrong, expressing something by words does not always work well.

If you say it loud and clear and even you mean it everyday, it wouldn’t take care of everything at all, of course.

Nor you can’t force anyone to trust or love you back either. Some words probably are better than nothing though they don’t cover everything that we know.

We say that we always love our children and no matter what, we will be always here for them. We say those but those words are taken by the children or not, we don’t know.

I say, love, trust and respects are not something you can tell anyone to give or have, or no one can orders or forces to have feel on specific person.

No one can make someone love someone else including Genie of Aladdin’s lamp.

Feelings of love or trust just happen to each one of us when we want it happen to ourselves. All those feelings are in us so we are the only people who can have control over them.

Thus we have to make sure that we earn love, trust and respect from our children and it is not easy a job as we know.