Whether you are a parent or you know someone who is a parent, you no doubt can appreciate the universal desire of practically all expecting parents. The desire, the plea, the prayer to have a happy and healthy baby with ten fingers and ten toes.
During those moments while mom is in labor, even parents who claim no religious affiliation find themselves holding their breath on bent knee praying like the most ardent religious follower for a happy and healthy baby with ten fingers and ten toes. That prayer – please let my baby be healthy… is the only thing that matters for those excruciating moments when the expecting parents are waiting and watching as their little bundle of joy crosses the threshold from the womb to doctors hands.
The parents listen intently as if Moses himself is about to read the Ten Commandments for the first time. The parents just want to hear the doctor say “congratulations you have a healthy and happy baby“.
At first it appears, having a happy and healthy baby that grows to be a happy and healthy child are the only things that matter to expecting parents. Regrettably, we find more often than not the hopes and prayers for a happy and healthy baby last only until the parent sees that the baby has ten fingers and ten toes and the doctor has declared the baby healthy.
After the baby has received the healthy thumbs up, the universal nine month prayer is cast aside like manna falling from heaven for other parental desires that most often have nothing to do with the initial primary objective of raising a healthy and happy baby. In fact, most of the parental goals and objectives from the moment the baby takes its first breath and wiggles its ten fingers and ten toes are of things that will eventually lead to their little bundle of joy growing into anything other than a happy and healthy child.
Today’s Children Are Sad
Mental health issues affecting children are at epidemic proportions. It seems not a day goes by that an incident involving a child shooting another child, a child shooting at a school or a child threatening and planning some mass destructive act is not reported. From Virginia Tech to Sandy Hook Elementary School to Columbine High School, our children are mentally ill and have no regard for the life of others.
The National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP) reports ” that children’s mental health problems are widespread”. Today mental health issues are routine and arise in children at the earliest age. Moreover, NCCP reports that “one in five children has a diagnosable mental disorder and that one in ten children has a serious mental health problem that is severe enough to impair how they function at home, school or in the community”.
Our children are failing in school, abusing drugs and alcohol and killing themselves and others. Our children face grave danger and in many cases certain death. What happened to all the happy babies?
Today’s Children Are Sick
The American Heart Association reports “Today, about one in three American kids and teens is overweight or obese, nearly triple the rate in 1963. Among children today, obesity is causing a broad range of health problems that previously weren’t seen until adulthood. These include high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes and elevated blood cholesterol levels.
There are also psychological effects: Obese children are more prone to low self-esteem, negative body image and depression. And excess weight at young ages has been linked to higher and earlier death rates in adulthood.”
Our children are sick. In fact our children are so sick that they aren’t even aware of just how sick they are. The sickness is readily evident in places like Steubenville High School and Richmond High School where sick young men not only rape but other sick children watch, video and report the rape on social media. What happened to all the healthy babies?
How Did We Get Here? What Happened to the Happy and Healthy Babies?
The answer to the million dollar question is always a simple one…parents! Parents are the reason our babies don’t grow up to be healthy and happy. Either parents have forgotten or they never received the most important of all parental directives that having a healthy and happy baby extends well beyond the delivery room. Today, now perhaps more than anytime in the history of the world, having a healthy and happy child should be the ultimate parental aim, a parent’s lifelong pursuit.
Unfortunately, too many parents have scrapped the most important of all parental directives, the lifelong pursuit of raising healthy and happy children for producing the next Bill Gates,Judit Polgar, Michael Jordan, Kristen Stewart, Kobe Bryant, Mia Hamm, LeBron James,Gisele Bundchen, Peyton Manning, Maria Sharapova, Tiger Woods, Beyoncé or Lionel Messi.
Even worse than trying to create the next All-American, first round draft choice, Mensa member, Forbes Highest Paid Athlete or People Magazine’s Most Beautiful Person is that too many parents misunderstand the real meaning of parenting – believing it is something that occurs simply because a child is born rather than the all-consuming 24/7/365 profession that it truly is.
Back to Basics
How can our children become happy and healthy? Parents need to get back to basics. Parents need to be parents and stop being just more pairs of participants in pornography and science experiments. Parenting is not about being proficient in Kama Sutra or knowing the sperm release pathway.
Parenting is a profession. Parenting is the most important profession for the growth and continuation of any society. America considers itself the greatest society in history and the greatest country in the world. Shouldn’t America’s parents then strive to be great?
“Great parents have learned that their real job, career, profession is that of parent and everything else they do even their “what do you do for a living” profession is in truth a glorified but paid hobby.”
Great parents realize how unprepared they are to be the caretakers of another life long before they consider bringing another life into this world. Great parents work diligently to educate themselves on their most important life long endeavor – parenting.
Great parents understand that if they have to attend school for thirteen years to pass a standardized test to graduate from high school and get into college, graduate and/or professional school then some significant amount of quality education must be required to be the parent, guardian and custodian for a precious, fragile and mold-able life.
Great parents understand that the continuing education to maintain one’s professional licenses and credentials pales in comparison to the continuing education required to raise healthy and happy children.
A Healthy Nation Must Produce Healthy and Happy Citizens
Today’s children are neither healthy or happy because today’s parents have not completely submitted themselves to the art of parenting. Today’s parents lack the devotion and dedication required to raise healthy and happy children. Today’s parents are themselves mis-educated, uneducated, under-educated or flat out derelict about the responsibility of nurturing their relational legacy and their societal duty as parents to produce and raise members of society who are mentally, physically and spiritually healthy. Regrettably, today’s children, tomorrow’s future parents and members of society are sad and sick.
America must remember that a tree shall be known by the fruit that it bears. America’s parenting tree is sick and sad and the fruit the tree is now bearing is equally unhealthy and unhappy – growing more sad and sick with each passing day.
Parents protect and cure your sick and sad tree and fruit. Let your focus, goals and objectives return to what it was when you were expecting – having a healthy and happy child with ten fingers and ten toes.