Children do not grow in the airless space, but are embedded in an existing culture and tradition. This is one of the many backpacks we get strapped. But it is not just a backpack, but something that is grounding us in a community. So I grew up in a traditionally Catholic, conservative milieu.
“Later, the child can decide for himself,” it says, and so we let it be good.
Later the child can decide himself, but also only if it has the possibility to ask the same values. I did this from a certain age. And learning one thing: Who is questioning one’s own values, traditions and customs is a kind of attack. And that is the real problem. Ultimately, the question must not be asked, because the interviewee feels questioned on its own. And before you reflect on your own actions and thinking, you rather stay in the comfort zone of the past. On the other hand, the person addressed is mostly aware that he does not have any answers because he believes in everything he believes in and lives by, even from his parents. We’d rather leave the blinders open. But this leads to the self-decision being absurd.
“Later, the child can decide for himself,” it says, and is a lie. This would require the people who shape their environment to be deeply rooted in what they themselves believe and have answers. To negate the questions is a disregard for the serious questioner who wants to know. Well, perhaps the child decides, by a very straightforward example, to follow this path and accept what has been taken over for himself. It also means that it can decide otherwise. To recognize this decision is the only way to take the others seriously. But most of the time this decision is accompanied by social sanctions. And who is really so free that he whistles to his former environment, the community?
“You can do what you want, as long as you do as it is,” is the tenor. As it should be? This means, if I have understood correctly, in the way you have always done it. The responsibility for doing is deported to a nameless figure who gives an apparently invisible order.
“Later, the child can decide for himself,” that is possible. Where I carry my child into what is important to me and is important but also available when it is asking for exactly that. It has to have answers. Not only for the child but also for myself. If I do not have adequate answers, then I have to ask myself why I believe what I believe or do what I do. If I have appropriate answers, then these apply to me. If the child can not recognize the child for himself, and nevertheless chooses another path, this does not alter the person to whom I am close. Love is supposed to take the other as it is. Thus, the possibility of true decision-making is based on the unprejudiced love and respect of the other, especially when it comes to people who are under development. Then, and only then, I can say with a clear conscience, “Later my child can decide for himself.”
