Kids & Parenting

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I read in Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, "A man feels wet when he falls into water, because man is not a water animal: a fish would not feel wet." What then crossed my mind was the cliché "a fish out of water". A fish doesn't think about whether it feels wet or dry; when it's swimming along very nicely I'm sure it doesn't even contemplate the fact that it's a fish and it's in water. However, pull it out of the water and it will react very strongly to the feeling that it's not where it's supposed to be. It doesn't try to adapt to being on the beach, saying to itself, "I think I'll try to be a seagull now". Maybe certain life did evolve from the sea, but that was a natural process extending over a very long period of time. I'm talking about one fish Now.

People, on the other hand, while having an inner-sense of when they're "a fish out of water", tend to think about that quite a bit. Unfortunately our thoughts on this are not always very clever, and the explanations other people give us often end up confusing the issue even more. Young children are very good at knowing who they are and, like the fish, don't go around thinking about it...they just Are. Too often, though, they're told, No, you're not a fish, you're a dog so you better act like a dog, and the child, being very trusting, starts to believe this. Or, if they've been blessed with a strong sense of Self and Spirit, will insist "I am a fish!"…at which point they're often judged to be very stubborn and rebellious. Then you can end up with a fish who believes it's a very stubborn and rebellious dog. Either way, what you may end up with is a fish that tries to go through life running and barking and fetching...all the things dogs do...and wondering what the problem is, why it feels like it's dying, because at some point it's forgotten that it's a fish. If fortunate, life will at some point throw that fish back into the water and Aha!...now it remembers it's a fish. If very fortunate, life will throw it back into the river or ocean rather than a man-made aquarium or little fish tank.

We are all created in the image of God, and when I look around at all God has created I see His images are infinite. So while children will contain the physical likeness of their parents, their Divine likeness may be nothing like the parents, and if we're given a fish our responsibility is to love them and, rather than tell them they have to fetch sticks, help them learn to be a really great fish...then allow them to swim.

Proverbs 22:6 "Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it." NIV

Kathy Alvarez 2007

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