“Love beyond your comfort zone.” – Homily, LaSalette priest
Any mother or father will likely agree that parenting is the toughest job ever. Man can control machines he designed. Man can control—not to mention fire—people he hired. Man can manage the business he started. Name it, man has learned to place controls on almost anything except probably nature and kids (and if I may add, the Philippines’ railway system). So far there isn’t an exact parenting blueprint that applies to all.
Parenting is and will always remain relatively tough. Technology can only do so much to aid any parent in controlling kids. Come to think of it, technology may have even added to the challenge of parental control. Show me an app that is proven to improve parenting and I promise to thank you later.
Then there’s that other factor.
If parenting a normal or an average child is already tough, more so being a mother or father of someone with a condition. The dilemma to discipline or to cut the child some slack comes into the picture.
This is how we now feel with Marcus. I consider myself a disciplinarian and my wife knows that I wouldn’t pass on an opportunity to lecture our kid. However, with us discovering that he has DMD made me step back. It makes me wonder though if such is a good idea after all. Marcus now spends longer time with his gadgets and games. He is not forced to wake up early. He is not required to run around to exercise. We stopped playing football in our yard. We even have to forget–completely–about biking around the village. In short, lesser physical activities to avoid getting him stressed out.
Chances are all these changes surprised him but I fear that it also spoiled him more because everything is now on his favor, under his own terms. I realize that this is where things could start to go wrong in the long run. So however hard it may seem, I can’t allow it to happen. A balance must be established back in some way.
How we should strike a balanced parenting with his condition factored in is something we are still trying to figure out. I believe that appropriate parenting should continue so that when that time comes we have already built a good foundation where our future relationship depends.
For now we continue to treat him as a normal kid as much as we can. While we can see that he is starting to wonder why he is not as agile as most kids do, we haven’t told him everything yet. He is still a kid who is restless, one who likes to move around whenever he feels like doing so. We can only advise but we do not suppress movement as long as we see that it won’t tire him out and make him fall uncontrollably.
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“Serious ka na naman! (You look serious again!)” is Marcus’ new statement. First heard it after he caught me too focused on our Call of Duty game.
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Mood: 3/10 Honks! (When you listen, you learn.)
Marcus Can Blog 