The Next Best Thing

Charlotte Davis Kasl once said, ~Whether or not you have children yourself, you are a parent to the next generation. If we can stop thinking of children as individual property and think of them as the next generation, then we can realize we all have a role to play.~ One the greatest responsibilities in life for a person is the rearing, well-being, and safety of a child or children. Whether its your own or someone elses, people will undeniably take stock in one's own social interaction, temperment, and disciplinary action which gives people a preconceived perception of the type of parent you are or potential parent you might become one day. Let me ask you those that don't have kids yet, do you think you would make a great mother or father?

In some apsect, depending on one's own upbringing, each of us want to someday be the parent who wants to be either close or at least the same level of one's own parents. Yet, one can never match the skills one's own parents attained; you just have to live and learn like they did with their own parents who, like us, made them crazy, anfry, and frustrated to the point they too pulled out their own hair. If you think about it, anybody can have kids; but it takes two special people to be a mother and a father. For its those qualities that aren't really revealed at first but as time moves on friends, family, and possibly co-workers will see the hidden potential slowly rise to the surface.

In any case, we've all hear or seen stories of deadbeat dads, as well as, moms that don't care about their family, For its a sad situation indeed when a father and a mother walks away from one's family and refuses to take responsibility for the life or lives he or she has helped bring into the world. Much can be said for a person who is a single father or mother as the added pressure of providing for them as he or she is also trying to spend as much time with them as possible. One can give thanks to him or her for with what one had and hopefully you grew up to be well adjusted kid(s). Essentially, the question can be asked are you a part of a single parent household or did you have both parents firmly in your corner?

Ultimately, if you take a step back and looks at what one's parents have done for us over the years which shows how they truly love us. Despite the punishments, which were either deserved or undeserved, it helped us become the well adjusted, respectful, polite, and well mannered adults we are today. Now a days, you can't even punish your kids in public. For its truly amazing to witness when a child, not a parent, is in control of the situation at hand and all she does is let him, her, or them express themselves. Let me tell you something, I had everything thrown at me except the kitchen sink whenever I acted up and to be perfectly honest, I'm glad they did it when I was young age because it knocked some sense into me.

In a past yodaism, I said I believed I have the potential to be a father and I still stand by that statement. Yet, to become a father would mean I have to get married first, which I hope to one day, but in the mean time I'm at least a father figure to "my kids" in the asylum where I work at, but I digress. Over the past couple of months, I've been bonding with a friend of mine's baby son. The parents, over those couple of months, apprently saw how that bond grow and last Sunday, I was given a possible offer that I couldn't refuse. Undoudbtedly, its an honor and privilege just to be asked and this past Sunday I was officially made Godfather and even though I may or may not be a father one day, being Godfather is the next best thing.