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176 lines
6.8 KiB
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[1]Skip to content[2]Skip to site index
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[4]Today’s Paper
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[5]Opinion|One Thing Parents Can Control
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[6][7]
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https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/16/opinion/parenting-mistakes-joy.html
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[24]
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Opinion
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One Thing Parents Can Control
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April 16, 2024
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An illustration that shows a silhouette of a parent holding a child’s hand.
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there are two-dimentional butterflies flying around them.
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Credit...Gabriel Zimmer Studio
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• [29]277
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[30]Esau McCaulley
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By [31]Esau McCaulley
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Contributing Opinion Writer
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My father was a long-haul truck driver. He piloted one of those
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eighteen-wheelers that had a horn that could raise the dead. As a kid I longed
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to join him on his journeys and discover something of the world beyond
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Huntsville, Ala., where we lived.
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Despite his numerous promises, he never took me along. That failure, and the
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addictions of his that defined much of my childhood, gave me an education of a
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different sort. I learned that the world could be cruel and disappointing.
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Now that I am a father, I struggle with how much of that hard world to reveal
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to my sons and daughters. I recognize the privilege in even considering this.
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Parents of children in Gaza and Ukraine do not have the luxury of deciding
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whether to tell their young ones of evils done and all the good left undone.
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Bombs descending from above indifferent to the innocence of youth have become
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their instructors.
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I believe that we all have a moral duty not to turn away from such suffering.
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During dinner my family and I have talked and prayed about war, poverty, racism
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and injustice. My hope is that if we instill a sense of empathy in our
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children, they might create a better world than the one we have made.
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It is not just the global upheaval that gives me pause. It is my own mistakes.
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Not one of us escapes those high-pressure early years of parenthood unscathed.
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There are always words that we wish that we could unsay, decisions made that we
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would reconsider if time ran backward. What unfulfilled promise will haunt my
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children? What will they have to forgive?
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Childhood memories rush upon us awakened by a smell or a song or certain times
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of year. The scent of fried chicken takes me back to my grandmother’s house. I
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can almost hear the crunch it made when I took a bite. Every time I pass an
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eighteen-wheeler on the Interstate, I remember my father. Fall reminds me of
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the anxiety I felt when I knew that I had to go back to school without any new
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outfits or shoes, hoping I wouldn’t be mocked. I am 44 years old, and I still
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remember the hard thumps in my chest.
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