I think that in order to parent effectively, we are going to have to admit two things: We can't keep our children safe. We can't accept the fact that we can't keep our children safe.
Interpretation
Effective parenting requires acknowledging our inability to fully protect our children.
Glennon Doyle Melton emphasizes that to be effective parents, we must confront the uncomfortable truth that we cannot guarantee our children's safety. Accepting this reality allows us to parent with greater honesty and resilience, preparing both ourselves and our children to face life's challenges.
In practice
In a parenting workshop, this quote can be discussed to encourage openness about parenting fears.
The hardest part of living without social media was remembering that my little life was enough, so I could just stay there and live it without asking for anyone else's permission or validation. I realized that for me, posting is like asking the world, 'Do you 'like' me?'
Sometimes the rewards of risk don't leave us wrecked. Sometimes we find our passion, our purpose, courage, connection, and comfort. Every good thing in our lives is a direct result of risk.
One of the reasons we stay so alone in our lives is because we're ashamed to talk about the hard stuff. It's as simple as that. We're all in pain in different ways, and we don't get the help we need because we're too ashamed to talk about the pain.
A safe life includes following your dreams with the full knowledge that doing so is not, in any way, shape or form, safe in the traditional meaning of the word. Because living safely means dying without too many regrets. That is safe.
We are - each and every one of us - unlearning misogyny. It's going to take some time. But be aware and active of your prejudices. Notice when they kick in and resist. Fight to stay soft and open. Step back and squint hard.
Integrity means there is not a real-life you and an internet you. The two are one and the same. If you're not kind on the Internet, you're not kind.
The happiest moments of my childhood were spent on my grandmother's front porch in Durham, N.C., or at her sister's farmhouse in Orange County, where chickens paraded outside the kitchen's screen door and hams were cured in the smokehouse.
Dear parents, teach your children to pray. Pray with them.
Arguably, the families most at need of housing assistance are systematically denied it because they're stamped with an eviction record. Moms and kids are bearing the brunt of those consequences.
My son smelled like a cinnamon bun, and that smell entered into my biological being, and it became an imperative that I keep him alive at all costs, so then there's this monster - this tiger or lion - that comes forward in you to protect them. And it doesn't stop. It doesn't matter if they become men or women.
It was the policy of the good old gentleman to make his children feel that home was the happiest place in the world; and I value this delicious home-feeling as one of the choicest gifts a parent can bestow.
Making the family a top priority will invariably bring success.
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