“Adulting.” We never heard that word when we were kids. What is adulting, right? We just grow up, and we have to do our own thing. And as my children are doing that now, we’ve seen them haven’t had jobs or whatever, and now it’s so different from us. We could go to a job and sell ourselves. Right now, everything’s online. They can’t check off all the boxes; you don’t even have a chance to prove that you’d be the perfect candidate for that job. And things are so different now with adulting than they were for us. But I think our children appreciate when they’re paying their bills and they’re having to take care of things. “Wow. If I’m struggling and I don’t have children, how did mom do it?” And they’re always like waiting for that perfect time.
I was just talking to someone today, and I said, “You know, there’s no perfect time.” Like, one of my clients, he’s like, “Well, this needs to line up so I can go get a job.” I’m like, “You just got out of college. Like, what are you waiting for?” I said, “It’s just like having kids. If we keep waiting for the perfect time to have kids, we’re never going to have kids. The perfect time is the day that you find out you’re pregnant. Anf, guess what? This must be the perfect time, because the person above said, “Yes, it’s going to be the perfect time.” But it’s also being there for their disappointing times, too. I mean, I think that our kids, as they get older, feel pain differently than they did when they were kids. There’s a lot more emotion, and there’s a lot more responsibility. And so it’s coming in and saying, “I got you.”
What are the values that you want to instill in your children now so that when they’re adults, they continue, and it continues to foster and create those values in your grandchildren? Is it love unconditionally? What does that look like? Is it respectable? Is it trust? How do you create trust? If you didn’t have trust in your family, what could your parents have done differently that you now can take on and do differently for your children? What does hope look like? What does joy look like? What does safety look like? What does confidence look like? What does encouragement look like?
Listen to the full episode here:
“Cherished Connections: Cultivating Love and Traditions Across Generations” | with Cindy Gould
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