Austeja Landsbergiene
Following is the full transcript of Austeja Landsbergiene’s TEDx Talk: Responsible Parenting – Create Memories, Not Expectations at TEDxRiga conference.
Austeja Landsbergiene – Founder, Vaikystės Sodas
Every single one of us here today knows something about families. Every single one of us is someone’s child, therefore has experienced parenting. Some of us are parents and have our own children. I have four.
As human beings, we are all familiar with expectations. Expectations laid on us to succeed in life, expectations at work – to deliver, to be effective, to know, not to fail – the expectations for parents to juggle personal and professional lives, eat healthy food, prepare our children healthy meals every day, participate in sports, read books every night, and excel at work at the same time.
Today, you have expectations for me: to surprise you, to reveal something new, to tell a secret of parenting you have not known before. You have those expectations.
I have been an educator for 20 years, a mother for 15 years, two master’s degrees, one PhD, running 15 preschools in Latvia and Lithuania, three schools, author of parenting books. I bet this room is filled with thoughts, hopes, duties, and tasks. It’s like a raindrop getting bigger, bigger and bigger before it falls.
And what do we do? Without noticing, we transfer all these expectations that we have on our children. When I was opening my first preschool, I was introducing a new concept of contextual education to parents, training new teachers, and assembling IKEA furniture at the same time.
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