Love and Fear

I was reading a blog post that my friend Danea linked to on Facebook about bullying today. It's an excellent post, and if you have any contact with children, be it as a parent, teacher, caregiver, friend, or family member, I highly urge you to read it. It's very good. I was bullied as a child, but not as bad as the author. I was always a year or two younger than everyone else in my class due to skipping a grade. I also was very smart and usually the teacher's pet. Add to that one overprotective mom who didn't let me go anywhere or do anything, and some serious poverty... well, you might as well have painted a target on my back! I'm surprised it wasn't worse than it was, but after reading that post, I'm thankful it wasn't.

What I wanted to write about, was this other post that was linked to from the bullying post. It's entitled "You just broke your child. Congratulations." By the sixth paragraph, I was in tears. Not necessarily because I was feeling bad for this unnamed boy, even though I was. I was in tears because although that's how the post was set up, it isn't always dads who break their children. Sometimes it's moms. That could have been written about me, in the corner grocery store, with my mom threatening me for no discernible reason.

I firmly believe that there are two ways to raise children - through love and through fear. My mom was definitely in the "fear" camp. I hope that boy, where ever he is, can find love and learn that his dad's way isn't the only way it has to be, and I hope someone gives him a hug.

And now I'm crying again.