'I was Dad for a day' article in the Guardian

I came across this article (click on the link above) in the Guardian yesterday and thought the last section summed up really succinctly the change in our lives when we become parents. I love the fact that the mother just gets up to put her child back to bed without even thinking about it and think it's a great example of how we do so many things on a daily basis which we don't even think about any more. One comment slightly jarred with me though:

"All your life up til that point [when you have children] you're self-focused, you're the centre of the picture....When you have kids you stop being the picture: you become the frame."

While I agree that you can't be self-focused when you have children, I can't believe that we as parents should simply let our children take centre stage.If everything about family life is designed to put children first and to develop them to become the best they can be (as so much middle-class parenting seems to be about these days, with the endless clubs, lessons, and activities), how will children ever learn that other people have needs too? And how much pressure will they feel if they think that their parents' lives have been put on hold to bring them up?

Instead of the idea of children as a picture and parents as a frame, I'd like to think of my family life as one enormous canvas where we all splatter paint on, rub things out, start again; a picture that we all create and recreate together each day. Much less pressure for us as parents, and much more fun for our kids too!