Challenge #02583-G026: Ma Yub

There are two kinds of parents. There's the kind that thinks their children should have the experiences that they had when they were a child, and there's the kind that thinks their children should have something better than that.

The problem with being that second kind, I've found, is that it's hard to give your children something better when you don't really know what that looks like. -- Anon Guest

Bringing up the next generation of cogniscent life is never easy. Certainly, the basic caretaking falls into a pattern. Clean, dress, feed, and hold. Communication in all its forms tends to take place anyway. It's after the child surpasses the basic needs that the trouble begins, because education will occur whether the parent thinks they're doing it or not.

The two primary patterns of parenting are Sharing, and Expansion. Sharing includes all the good experiences of the parental childhood into the experiences of the child. Expansion improves on the past of the parent, so that the child has a better life. Easy for some.

Dan knew that he couldn't Share. Not his childhood, with the terrible neglect and the yelling and the harsh blows for the least infraction. The shouted, "Did that teach you? Did that teach you?" with his parents looming over him. It taught him, all right. It taught him things that it took years of therapy to get over. It taught him what not to do with an iron rod and the threat of hellfire. He was, he hoped and prayed, the very last of the Abused Generation, doing his utmost to see that his children could not ever suffer. So far, so good. It was the next step that had him baffled.

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