Life is full of choices. Some are easy choices and some are hard, but the upside of choices is they are always ours to make and no one can ever take that away from us. However, the downside to choices is that while we get to make them, we don\u2019t get to choose what consequences may result from them.<\/p>\n
Some choices bring positive consequences and others result in negative consequences.\u00a0 And just as our choices are ours alone to make, the consequences of our choices are ours alone to bear. Thus bringing light to just how seriously we should be taking the choices we make in our lives.<\/p>\n
You would think that as you get older, making choices becomes easier\u2026and in some cases that\u2019s true. That\u2019s because hopefully we\u2019ve been learning from the mistakes we\u2019ve made that brought negative consequences upon us that then teach us to be wiser and make better choices the older we get.<\/p>\n
Then you become a parent\u2026and suddenly you are watching your kids make choices. You watch them make mistakes and everything in you wants to jump in and save them from their consequences because as a parent the last thing you want is to see your child hurt. But you can\u2019t\u2026or at least you shouldn\u2019t\u2026.because facing those consequences is what taught you to be wiser and make better choices, and now you need to allow their negative consequences to do that same thing for them\u2026.but man is it difficult to do\u2026.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m gonna fully admit I have never been good at letting my kids face their consequences\u2026it kills me to see them sad or hurt\u2026but I\u2019ve realized it\u2019s an area I have to get better at – for their sake. I\u2019m recognizing that good parenting requires not only allowing our children to make their own choices, but also allowing them to face the consequences of their choices\u2026even when it\u2019s heartbreaking for them to do so.<\/p>\n
\u201cLife was never intended to consist of a glut of luxury, be an easy course, or filled only with success. There are those games which we lose, those races in which we finish last, and those promotions which never come. Such experiences provide an opportunity for us to show our determination and to rise above disappointment.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span> -Thomas S. Monson<\/p>\n The best we can do is to try to encourage our kids to learn from our past mistakes while explaining to them how much easier their lives will be if they avoid having to learn things the hard ways that we did. \u00a0After that all we can do is be present to hug them when they stumble and remind them that the heartbreaking experiences are their opportunity to show their determination and rise above disappointment.<\/p>\n ~Amy Rees Anderson<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Life is full of choices. Some are easy choices and some are hard, but the upside of choices is they are always ours to make and no one can ever take that away from us. However, the downside to choices is that while we get to make them, we don\u2019t get to choose what consequences […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6772,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[16780,222,395,46,999,16774,2557,1170,8432,218,928,244,65,16778,16787,137,16777,16776,11307,990,16786,16784,1770,242,16779,16783,112,149,3008,16775,16782,16781,3894,2212,16785],"class_list":["post-8973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-adult-children","tag-agency","tag-amy-rees-anderson","tag-attitude","tag-child","tag-choice-and-consequence","tag-dad","tag-determination","tag-encouraging","tag-failure","tag-free-agency","tag-grateful","tag-gratitude","tag-it-isnt-easy-but-it-is-worth-it","tag-im-not-good-at-this","tag-kindness","tag-life-isnt-meant-to-be-easy","tag-life-was-never-intended-to-consist-of-a-glut-of-luxury","tag-make-good-choices","tag-mom","tag-need-for-improvement","tag-negative-consequences","tag-parenthood","tag-parenting","tag-rise-above-disappointment","tag-rise-above-it","tag-self-improvement","tag-success","tag-teenager","tag-the-hardest-part-of-being-a-parent","tag-the-heartbreak-of-parenting","tag-the-joy-of-parenthood","tag-thomas-s-monson","tag-worth-it","tag-you-cant-choose-your-consequences"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8973"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8973\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8975,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8973\/revisions\/8975"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}