How much is enough?

As a parent, I have often found myself repeating the phrase that I heard so often in my youth. Lately I find myself wondering just how much is enough? What do I have to give my children that I did not have? The answer to this question is nothing. My children want for nothing, they have food in their tummies, a roof over their heads, a warm comfortable bed to sleep in and clothes on their back. They are rich in love and I keep their emotional buckets filled to the brim so that no-one can poke holes in their self-image that will leave any permanent damage. Why then do I feel like they are lacking and that I need to give them more? Could it be that I have lost sight of what my children actually need in my pursuit to keep them happy in an age where technology and materialistic stuff equates with happiness? If this is the case, am I the only parent who has lost sight of what is important? Perhaps I am and I own it.  

If this is the case and the phrase “We are trying to give you what we never had as kids” is passed from one generation to the other, what expectations am I setting my children up for? How much more will they have to give their children to make this phrase true? The thought that the expectations for children receiving and getting is becoming far greater than what I think parents can cope with is very real. Parents work long and hard to provide for their children what they did not have as children. Sometimes the cost of this is detrimental as parents miss out on what is actually important: spending quality time with their children. 

I have come to the realisation that children do not need the latest of everything to feel validated and loved and if they do, we as parents have somehow failed them. Children need to be taught to value what they have and respect what they can get and what their parents are able to afford. They need to be taught not to make their parents feel guilty if they have not got the latest iPhone 12 or a brand new out-of-the-box car for their 18th. Maybe, we as parents, need to take a step back and re-evaluate our need to give and cater to instant gratification. Perhaps it would be pertinent for us to allow our children the satisfaction of having to save pocket money and buy their own phone or brand takkies. I am sure that if they were taught the value of appreciating what they have and not of what they want, then we can break the cycle of trying to give our children what we never had.  

To this day, I am not sure what it is my parents never had, because they had all the things that my children have, and I had all the things that they did.