Unskilled Work

There’s a job we’re all doing for which none of us were trained. Not only are we unskilled, perhaps even inept, but many of us are content to fly by the seat of our pants as we work at this job and to be satisfied with whatever casual on-the-job training that happens to us. We may even accept advice or believe information from others who were likewise untrained. To make this scenario even worse, this job which we are content to do on the wing and without professional training is probably the most important job we’re ever going to have in our whole lifetimes. We wouldn’t let this happen to us in our regular job. Not only do we train for our professions, but we train for years to gain these understandings and skills. We even continue to train once we have the job by going to seminars or to special meetings. Sometimes experts are brought to our places of employment to further train us. And sometimes, we even quit or change these jobs for other ones we like better. Eventually we even retire from these types of jobs all together. Yet these jobs, as important as they are, mainly give us only tangible rewards. But for the job about which I’m talking you can never be fired and you can never retire from it. Furthermore, you have the potential to receive the greatest gifts life can offer from this occupation. What in the world is this job and how did this all happen to all of us?

Well, fellow parents, this job is called PARENTING, and most of us were tricked into it by Mother Nature herself. She used several techniques to achieve her aim of populating the earth with human beings. One way she enticed us into parenthood was by making the act of reproduction so attractive that few of us could resist it. She added another card to the game by making human babies so cute that some of us, primarily the females of our species, actually longed to do whatever was necessary to get one of them. Then, of course, some of us were doubly tricked because we became parents “by accident!” What we were doing had nothing to do with applying for the job.

While some of you may have had to “work” a little or a lot harder than others at becoming parents, probably most of us made the mistaken assumption that because almost everyone got this job of PARENTING without any apparent qualifications, indeed the job didn’t require any training. In fact, the job requires not only training of a lifetime, but patience unending, love the depth of oceans, kindness that knows no bounds, and a willingness to sacrifice oneself for the benefit of the child. Suddenly this job that we all happened upon can be recognized for what it is, our opportunity to be more than we thought we could be. For what better thing can happen to a person than to be loved, really loved, by a child.

Hopefully this newsletter has caused you to think in new ways about your job and will serve as encouragement for you to commit to participating in our parent education programs. We are in the process of creating a parenting program which will offer classes for all of you. We look forward to working with you next year, with as many of you as will take these words seriously and enroll in the Center’s parenting program. Your children deserve your best job, and so do you!