Parents Feed, Raise, and Teach
Parents do so much for kids. They feed us, raise us, teach us. Yet I still feel like kids don’t always appreciate everything that parents do for their kids. Occasionally, kids focus more on the disagreements we’ve had with our parents more than the good things they’ve done for us.
Kids are Expensive
I don’t think kids realize how much money parents spend a year on kids. The average amount it costs to raise a child to 18 is $241,080. That’s not even counting the price of college. To me, that didn’t seem like a lot at first, but if you think about it, it’s a ton of money. Parents have to buy food, clothes, school supplies, sometimes private school tuition, electronics, allowance, etc. Even without some of the unnecessary items, we are still talking about high amounts. And if you have multiple kids, that number just climbs even more.
Parents Teach Us
Another thing kids forget is how much parents teach us. School might give us the academic education, but parents teach us the harder stuff to learn. They teach us how to do our own laundry, how to cook, how to talk on the phone, how to fill out forms, etc. A bunch of the things that we learn from our parents would be very difficult to learn by ourselves.
Not only do parents pay for us and teach us, but they have the hard job of raising us. They have to make sure that we don’t do stupid things that we’ll regret later, and that can be the hardest job of all. Kids don’t like to admit that we’re wrong. No one does. So when a parent warns us to put on sunscreen or we’ll get burned, we often don’t listen.
Parents Want Their Kids to Achieve
No parent wants to see their kid mess up. They want their kids to prosper and achieve, they want them to succeed. However, it can be beneficial to let a kid mess up. For example, if a child is going to the beach, and their parent forces them wear sunscreen, they won’t learn anything from the experience. The child won’t get burned, but they might not realize that the reason they didn’t burn was because of the sunscreen. On the other hand, if the parent urges the child to wear sunscreen, but the child doesn’t, that child will learn why the parent said to wear sunscreen. They would learn much more from the burn than they would have from not burning.
Kids Lost Without Parents
Some children don’t want to admit it, but kids would be absolutely lost without parents. They are the support that we need as we grow up. They help us to laugh at mistakes, and learn from them. They help us to make goals, and reach them. Parents are the safety net that keeps us from crashing and burning. They are the only people who will never judge us, and will never give up on us. Kids always have, and always will, need parents. See you next week!
“Reprinted from Hagel Publications, Inc. dba as Courier Newspapers”