(This is the second article I wrote last year when I was doing a little writing exercise. Ha ha! The year just started and I'm writing about my Halloween experience... :-p)
Compared to
all the colorful, exciting and fun Halloween events my kids have experienced, my own Halloween experience was a bit more traumatic. I guess back in my time, parents were the usual control-freak creatures that will make you wear what they want, mainly because “they” think “you” look good in it.
My mother is a perfect example of such a creature, much worse than Bree Van De Kamp and the other middle-aged, control-freak, women you see in Desperate Housewives. She and my Lola (the sister of her real mother, not my grandmother) asked me what I wanted to be for Halloween (ok, so they asked, big deal!) so I said, I wanted to be a witch. As a kid, I didn’t think of the horrible looking witch like in the cartoon Snow White. I wanted to be a little more like Sabrina – the teenage witch. To my horror, my, oh so ever control-freak Lola (we call her Tita by the way, because she doesn’t want to be called Lola, but technically she already is a Lola because she’s the sister of my real grandmother – my grandfather remarried, hence, the word real was used), put her very ugly, teased, curly wig on me and put make-up on my face to make it look like I have wrinkles! Uuugghhh! The horror…. When I looked at the mirror, I didn’t want to get out of the house! I didn’t even want to go trick or treating anymore! That was so horrible, I never have forgotten it up to this day.
Moral lesson? Kids only have a way of seeing things differently. They wouldn’t care what a real witch would look like, or what a real Ninja warrior really does, or how Frankenstein still managed to walk around after all those stitches! They wouldn’t care! All of that, to them, it’s all fantasy, all pretend play, and that’s what’s important – for us parents to nurture those thoughts of pretend and fantasy play so that it will inspire their creative thinking and make their minds more happy and useful as they grow up.
Parents and g
randparents as well, must be up to date with their kids, even if in terms of what games they like, what music they listen to, and most especially, parents must learn to adapt to modern times even with their philosophies. Nowadays, there is no more black and white. There are already gray areas and every situation is different. I am not saying that you turn your backs away from the good values your parents have instilled to you as a kid. If it’s a good one, by all means, spread it around, not only to your kids but to all the people you know. But if you think that you’re outdated, or that philosophy doesn’t apply anymore, change it! Change it for the better. Get to know your kids more, have fun with them, love them, nurture them, and make them live their lives like everyday is a happy ending.
Compared to
all the colorful, exciting and fun Halloween events my kids have experienced, my own Halloween experience was a bit more traumatic. I guess back in my time, parents were the usual control-freak creatures that will make you wear what they want, mainly because “they” think “you” look good in it.My mother is a perfect example of such a creature, much worse than Bree Van De Kamp and the other middle-aged, control-freak, women you see in Desperate Housewives. She and my Lola (the sister of her real mother, not my grandmother) asked me what I wanted to be for Halloween (ok, so they asked, big deal!) so I said, I wanted to be a witch. As a kid, I didn’t think of the horrible looking witch like in the cartoon Snow White. I wanted to be a little more like Sabrina – the teenage witch. To my horror, my, oh so ever control-freak Lola (we call her Tita by the way, because she doesn’t want to be called Lola, but technically she already is a Lola because she’s the sister of my real grandmother – my grandfather remarried, hence, the word real was used), put her very ugly, teased, curly wig on me and put make-up on my face to make it look like I have wrinkles! Uuugghhh! The horror…. When I looked at the mirror, I didn’t want to get out of the house! I didn’t even want to go trick or treating anymore! That was so horrible, I never have forgotten it up to this day.
Moral lesson? Kids only have a way of seeing things differently. They wouldn’t care what a real witch would look like, or what a real Ninja warrior really does, or how Frankenstein still managed to walk around after all those stitches! They wouldn’t care! All of that, to them, it’s all fantasy, all pretend play, and that’s what’s important – for us parents to nurture those thoughts of pretend and fantasy play so that it will inspire their creative thinking and make their minds more happy and useful as they grow up.
Parents and g
randparents as well, must be up to date with their kids, even if in terms of what games they like, what music they listen to, and most especially, parents must learn to adapt to modern times even with their philosophies. Nowadays, there is no more black and white. There are already gray areas and every situation is different. I am not saying that you turn your backs away from the good values your parents have instilled to you as a kid. If it’s a good one, by all means, spread it around, not only to your kids but to all the people you know. But if you think that you’re outdated, or that philosophy doesn’t apply anymore, change it! Change it for the better. Get to know your kids more, have fun with them, love them, nurture them, and make them live their lives like everyday is a happy ending.
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