User Manual

Photo by Barbara Jean Phillip

You wonder sometimes if we had ‘user manuals’ when we were born that things would turn out different, and there would be more ‘common sense’ in the world. Just reading the paper I was completed shocked to read about a mother  who left her son in the car whilst it was scorching hot outside. The mother claims that ‘she forgot he was in the car’ as she got carried away doing the Christmas shopping!

I know I shouldn’t judge however this behaviour is so wrong, how can you forget your own child whilst you do the shopping? Thank goodness a passerby heard the screams and broke a window and got him out. How hysterical would that little toddler be? And the psychological damage created in that traumatic event, it could really impact him. If we had user manuals the mother would know better. It would be stated, that under no circumstances to leave children alone in the car.

Yet I guess we are all so different and follow different sets of values and beliefs that to create a user manual for all would be a monumental task. There would be so many considerations to think about, culturally, religion, race and who would be the authority on what goes in the user manual. Ok seemed like a simplistic idea at the time. My point is that some people get it and others just don’t. That is the huge disparity in opinions and the way we do things. That is why being tolerant is the key; just because you would do it doesn’t mean others would agree and follow.

That is why we have our values and this is our compass in life, we are guided what is wrong and right. Unconsciously we do what our parents did or still do. Once we have children it is incredible how this programming dominates our behaviors in how we parent. I see this first hand with my little girl, I can see my mother in me when I am doing things with her, and I observe myself from this perspective. This natural programming takes over and luckily for me my mother is my greatest mentor.

So I guess perhaps this mother who left her little boy in the car had a similar experience and she felt abandoned in some way she just played out her program with her own son. It still makes it wrong; however we just run that program despite the consequences.