I did the Best I knew, and when
I knew Better, I did Better
I came across a quote the other day that reminded me of something I often forget as a parent, a quote by Maya Angelou that said to the effect, I did the best I knew and when I knew better, I did better. I can’t help but think to myself how often as a parent of four, I would question myself on decisions I made on a lot of things, but especially my children. If I had only spent more time, less time, different time or if I had forced my child to eat everything on their plate maybe they would have different diet habits, etc., etc. I go back to what Maya said, I did the best I knew and when I knew better, I did better. The fortunate thing about life is that we get to go ahead and advance our self. Time is really our friend; it’s our ally not our enemy. If we are willing to give new ideas the possibility then in fact we can learn to do better and then change the way we do things.
For years I have used the phrase, “this seemed like a good idea at the time”. I never have worked with any parents that were deliberately trying to foul up their children. You don’t sit across the table from your spouse and say, I have an idea honey, let’s see if we can screw up the kids today. We are all going in to this with the best of intentions. If you weren’t one of those people you wouldn’t be even reading this website. So.. lets not beat our self into pulp for yesterday. I often say, there is a reason why the rear view mirror is a lot smaller then the windshield. Yes, it’s worthwhile to see where we have come from, though the real challenge is to focus on the windshield as we move forward. So often when our children do something wonderful, like win an award in academics or in sports or whatever, we praise them, we say, this guy is so great., we give all the credit to the child. But the minute they screw up whatever it is, either small or large, we take a lions share of that responsibility on our self and that doesn’t really help.
So we did the best we knew and as we know better we are going to do better.
