Chanukah, oh Chanukah, come light the menorah
Let's have a party, we'll all dance the horah
Gather 'round the table, we'll give you a treat
Dreidles to play with and latkes to eat.
And while we are playing the candles are burning low
One for each night they shed a sweet light
To remind us of days long ago
One for each night they shed a sweet light
To remind us of days long ago.
When living an unpredictable, challenging, hectic, chaotic family life, how do you spare the time to come up with a philosophy on what's the best way to raise your children? Read lots of child-rearing books? Attend seminars by eminent professors on child development? Or maybe just have a photo-shoot on a nippy autumn day in Toronto, when you hope that there are enough brightly-coloured leaves on both the ground and the trees so that Photoshop isn't needed to fill up background space, while praying that the rain holds off and the sunlight is optimum at the time you're having your photos taken, not to mention straddling that fine line between "treats for good behaviour" and "sugar-high resulting in the kids jumping off the trees, literally".
Don't get me wrong - the photo-shoot itself was bloody awful and, after all the cajoling, bribing and threatening from Mater and Pater, the photographer was probably the only adult who left the park that day with their head held high. But the resulting photos, together with other similar photos taken throughout the past year, did get Pater thinking. There are so many articles, opinion pieces and general advice on how to rear our children and they all sound so black and white, so cookie-cutter, so easy. But when you stop and look at the photos of your children, and group them into two piles, you quickly realise that's just not possible. Because the two piles are mutually exclusive, so focusing on one is always going to be at the expense of the other, impacting the ultimate development of your child.
Each of our individual Avocado Juniors are separate blessings from God. They each have their own personalities, preferences, feelings, strengths and weaknesses, and while we try to nudge them to conform to that holy entity espoused by academia and snake oil salesmen alike as "the ideal child", it will never happen and we shouldn't beat ourselves up (or in Mater's case, beat Pater up) because the ideal child doesn't exist outside Disney and a lack of conformity to the mean is what makes for an interesting child who will lead an unpredictable but ultimately (we hope) highly rewarding life. We should therefore teach our children to embrace their individuality, to be comfortable not conforming, to enjoy the solitude that exists behind their eyes and use it to create whole new worlds.
However, the ascent of mankind over all other beasts can be ascribed to our historical adherence to tribalism and community, from which we have learnt, grown and developed over space and time. The exchange of ideas, the setting of moral boundaries, the improvement we seek for society both present and in the future, are all only made possible when we embrace others and value them accordingly. We should teach our children to respect the views and opinions of others, to acknowledge the greater good even if they get no benefit from it, to assume their responsibilities even when they infringes on their rights. Not because they will be better for it (though that may happen) but because history teaches us that mankind will be better for it.
Two piles of photos representing two very different contradictory, aspirations for our children. The struggle now is how to take the best of each pile and create a unique photo album for each child.
Hasses aren't only avocados.
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