What Does the Future Hold?

I just saved a new photo from my grand daughter's first birthday party as my Windows Desktop background.  I also have two grandsons.  One will be turning ten soon.  Double digits.  I think back to the world I knew when I was ten and I wonder what kind of world they will have when they look back on their youth.

Everybody in every time has had the same problems it seems.  Quotes for a couple of thousand years ago mirror today's problems.  I honestly do  not know if things are worse now or if it is just so much information is available to us we hear all the bad things and think things are worse.

My 58th birthday was last week and my youngest grandchild turns one this week.  What is she going to go through in the next 57 years?  I think of all the happy occasions she will see.  I think of all the sadness she will experience.  All the joys and pains of growing up.  And, it saddens me to some extent I will probably never see her as an adult.  My health is deteriorating too quickly to expect that.  I may make it to see my grandsons as adults but even that might be pushing things.

It all makes me hope I have had some influence on my own children so they will let their children grow and develop without all the chains I was burdened with in my childhood.  Parents obsess too much about raising kids.  They focus on the details too much.  It is hard not to do so.  But, all that children really need is parents who love them and let them know they are always loved.  Even when (maybe especially when) they make mistakes.

Allow them to think for themselves and support their thoughts even when they do not entirely agree with your own.  And, when a child asks questions the worst possible answer you can give is, "Because I say so".  When a child is old enough to ask a question that child is old enough to receive an honest answer.  Maybe you don't need to go into graphic detial but give an honest answer. 

I really do not think I have much to worry about.  Both my children are good mothers and both my sons-in-law are good fathers.  In that way I am a very lucky man and I am very thankful for that.  So many people in this world have so much less.

I don't know what the future does hold but I'm sure it will surprise me from time to time.  :-)  It will disappoint me and amaze me on different days.  But, I sure would like to see all my grandkids have kids of their own some day.  Not likely but I'd like for it to be so.