Are you cultivating weeds or orchids?

Question, are we raising our children or just allowing them grow up? There is a difference.

Did you just allow those weeds to grow up in your lawn or did you raise them? I bet they just grew up there and you look at them with distain every single day. Then why do we allow our children to just grow up and not raise them? If we don’t want society to look upon our youth with that same distain as an unwanted weed, then let’s start raising our children again, please! Unattended things like weeds just grow up in your lawn, but those prize winning orchids, they were cared for, nurtured, and tended to. You raise award winning orchids, you don’t just throw out the seeds and let them grow up on their own and expect them to be the best. So why do we just spread our seeds and leave them to grow up on their own? Whether we’re talking orchids or children, if you want the best out of them, you better take the time to care for, to nurture, to tend to, and to cultivate them. Otherwise you are limiting the chances of them reaching their full potential.

Our children are going to grow up regardless, but how do we want them to describe their upbringing? Whether we do it or not, someone or something is going to raise our children; i.e.“the streets raised me”, or “I was raised by loving parents”. Young people raised by the streets understand and abide by the rules of the street. Young people really raised by their parents will understand and abide by the rules of their parents. I know what you're thinking, does raising your child ‘the right way’ guarantee that they’ll turn out to be happy and productive citizens? No, no more so than raising your child ‘the wrong way’ guarantee that they’ll turn out to be dysfunctional adults. But I’d rather fail at trying to do the right thing than succeed at doing the wrong thing. We must start doing the right thing.

Long story short: Raise your children! Don’t just allow them grow up. Because after all, “you were raised better than that”.