Perspectives and Arguments

I have three children who are now young adults making their way through life. Overall, they had a great childhood, or that’s what I used to believe. Now not so much. I guess it depends on the perspective.

From my perspective, my children had the best childhood. I provided for them over and above. They never had wants, they had everything. A beautiful home, all of the toys, best neighborhood, best private schools, amazing vacations, lots of love, etc. I was at every sporting event and coached many of their teams growing up. I went to every school conference, school function and made sure to be present for them during homework, etc. My perspective is based on my childhood experiences. I healed my childhood trauma by making sure that my children never experienced all of the injustices that I had to navigate when I was a child. As a parent, that was my goal, and I overachieved.

From my children’s perspective, they may not have had the best childhood. Their experiences are different than mine and surely they have had to navigate injustices that are unbeknownst to me. That’s because their childhood experience does not directly include my childhood experience that I based my parenting on. It’s ridiculous for me to think that they would place as much value on the things that I did when I was raising them because they did not have the experiences that I had when I was younger. I am not sure if it’s even reasonable to think that I would have that wisdom while raising them. It’s only now as I try to understand my children as adults that I am able to unwrap why they would have a gripe about how they were raised. It’s not that I necessarily did anything wrong. It’s just how the cycle of being a parent works. My children will have children and raise them based on their childhood experiences and you can bet that their children will likely have a gripe or two that initially may seem unfathomable to their parents.
It’s through this reflection that I begin to think how my parents childhood must have been and so on.

My biggest takeaway is perspective. Everyone in this world has a different perspective based on experiences they have had in their lives. No one is going to have the same perspective hence why we have arguments (we argue to try to convince others to adopt our unique perspective). There is no right or wrong. There are only perspectives. Some perspectives break the law and have consequences but in that person’s perspective, they may not have thought they were doing anything wrong, or they just didn’t care. That’s an extreme example, but you get the point.

Some peoples perspectives are so misaligned with our perspectives, that they probably aren’t a good fit for us in a relationship, a friendship, or our political circles. They’re not wrong. I’m not wrong. We just have different beliefs. The next time I find myself in a position where I am tempted to judge, I am going to remind myself of their unique perspective and have more empathy.