Crystal Balls

Having a child is a major responsibility. The obvious manifestation of that is the general well being of the child; are they fed, do they have a place to sleep, do they have clothes on their back. Then thereof the next level of making sure that they have as many opportunities as you can afford; do they have access to the best schools, do they have the latest thing that Hasbro or Disney came up with to make insane, do they have experiences that round their childhood. There is yet another level of love and attention that sometimes gets put on the back burner in order to provide the first two levels. Logic dictates that that last level should be first because it's the least expensive but providing for a child is no easy task. We all know people working three and four job to make sure the kid has the basic, and a little more, all of which takes them away from their son or daughter. It's tough to find a balance with your little one when you can't balance the check book.

I say all of this because I see crystal balls around me all the time, glimpses of the many variations of the path that my daughter could take. I find myself judging their parents without ever having met them or the KIDS for that matter! I make the supposition that the parents didn't do their job when I see a young adult acting 'da fool'. I imagine a home when the mom or dad or both weren't involved with the development of the child, regardless of their presence. They had to have done something wrong.

And then the brutal truth hits me: you can provide support on all three level and still end up with a child that is rotten to the core! That. Is. Scary. Most of us have had to figure out a long mathematical problem in school. We all know the frustration of doing all the steps correctly and STILL come up with the incorrect answer. It's enough to make you want to take all of your books, rip them up, and dump them in your neighborhoods garbage can....or maybe that was just me! At any rate, imagine the frustration of spending years of breaking your break to provide for your spawn and giving them all the love affection they could need, only to raise a rebellious miscreant that becomes your block's pariah! That would break my heart and yet it happens all the time. And it's not the parents fault all the time. Sometimes is something so stupid (when they were six you didn't want to stop at the Wawa on the way back from Six Flags because it was getting late and they never forgot how mean you were and have never forgiven you) and all the parents good work goes in vain.

Every time I shoot a wedding, I watch the father-daughter dance, when there is one, and pray that my daughter grows up to be the type of woman that I would be proud to dance with at her wedding day. That doesn't mean that she has to be a doctor or a famous politician. It just means that she not the most frequently featured person on Cops! (is that show even still on?) It scares me that I don't have any control over that but I'm getting better at dealing with that. I am also getting better at not judging parents immediately. It is absolutely their doing sometimes but it's not automatic.

These are my thoughts...what are yours?