Blog#1 Childhood Memories

What is the most important thing for a child?
What experiences would I like the children of the world today have when they grow up?
What are the responsibilities of the adult world?

These questions make me think of my own childhood growing up during the fifties and sixties. I lived with my parents and my older sister in Linköping. Fifty years ago things were quite different from today. Life was different. School was different. Attitudes and almost everything was different. But children´s need was not different from today. It´s still the same.

Thinking of what´s important for a child I still remember something I asked my mother, when I was five or six years old. I asked her who was going to be my mother if she should die. I couldn´t imaging a life without a mother and I wondered who was going to take care of me? I think I remember it as clear as it was yesterday, because of the silence and that I never got an answer. My parents were the most important people in my life. When I grow older my grandmother became a very important person for me. I really loved her and I knew that I was important in her life. So my answer to what´s the most important thing for a child is , to have someone that cares for them, someone to trust. I wish every child should have someone who loves them.

There are lots of good experiences I would like children to have when growing up today. When growing up they will experience that life it´s not always simple. It can be both hard and unfair. But that´s the way life is. We can´t protect them from all bad things, but we can try to let them see all the good things in life. There are so much nice things to do if we just can see it. You don´t need a lot of money to be happy. I don´t say that money isn´t important but it worries me when so many children say that their dreams are to be rich and famous. Instead of doing things together it´s common that parents buy things for them. I think that it´s tremendous important that parents spend much time together with their children.

When thinking of all the responsibility we have as adults, I don´t know why I never hesitate a second to have children on my own. Today our two children are twenty- one and twenty-seven years old and I can discuss with them about their thoughts of their childhood. I can guarantee that our discussions are very interesting sometimes.

Finally, I think that most parents do the best they can in their efforts to raise their children. During the fifties there was a specialist in children´s diseases and in psychoanalysis, Donald Winnicott, who spoke about that mother´s were good enough to take care of their children. Good-enough-mother became a new expression. So If you can´t be the best parent you can try to be good- enough and that will do!