Change happens when we least expect it, and in the most unusual ways!!
Nothing Is Impossible: Reflections On a New Life
~~Christopher Reeves
PARENTING SITTING DOWN: In the weeks after my injury, I had to accept care by many hands
after a lifetime of physical strength,
independence and activity. Feeling like a child who had to be cared for gave me a new perspective on being a father. I became acutely aware that everything parents say and do has a powerful effect on our children, even when we think they are not paying attention. I feared that being a quadriplegic would mark the end of the life I had known with my three children while causing them enormous psychological and emotional damage. Wrong. I was still me and still Dad.
At six, my son Will, now a teenager, was afraid to ride his bike without training wheels. Sitting in my special chair in the driveway, I talked him through it. If someone had told me that you could teach a kid to ride on his own just by talking to him, I would have said, "Impossible." But we did it.
In talks with my older son, Matthew, I learned the power of inviting confidences and really listening. - Christopher Reeves
-------Wouldn't it be something if Mr. Reeves were showing us yet another positive, another strength, discovered in the aftermath of his horse-riding personal tragedy?
Hands-off parenting, discipline by encouraging and supporting, not punishing. What if it were physically impossible for parents to spank? What if everyone realized they were unqualified in forming and shaping and limiting another human being, and alternately encouraged and supported children in the activities and disciplines they chose in their own time and timetable? What if each parent decided to accept a virtual handicap package:
"I cannot spank, I cannot yell. But I can reason, and encourage, and support."
Would they be swinging the mail order "The Rod" to enforce conformity to parent-imposed rules? Or would they hold family roundtable discussions on how best to maintain order in the home? I think the latter. And gone would be America's "love them and hit them" approach to childrearing, the style that assumes the child is born full of evil, and needs to be punished until his/her "irrational exuberance" is entirely suppressed and the spirit destroyed.
I think Mr. Reeves could lead the way for many parents in a gentler, more enlightened
parenting style, one that renounces all forms of punishment and relies on trust in the basic goodness and humanity that is inborn in every child. Nothing is impossible. - Norm Lee
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A Bob Dylan song in the Sixties lamented that there was "no one to look up to". Today we have heroes to admire, even fewer role models worth following. But there is one head and shoulders above everyone, a hero and exemplar who has set a standard we can aspire to.
Christopher Reeves has shown us what courage is, and in doing so, set a standard for quality of character. He related that after his accident he lay there with these thoughts:
"Well, I can't move a muscle, I can't eat food, I can't breathe without a machine ...what's left? My mind. I have a mind. I'll use that. And he began the long road back.
That was eight years ago. Today he leads a non-profit organization supporting research for those similarly crippled, gives lectures without his machine, can actually move several fingers, and looks to the day when he can walk unassisted to the microphone in a news conference.
