This may sound silly, but I get my parenting inspiration from Japanese anime. To be more precise: Card Captor Sakura (in short: CCS). For those who don't know the series: CCS is about Sakura, a little Japanese girl, that has to collect all kinds of magical cards. And those cards are not easy to catch. She has to complete that quest while her ordinary life at home and at school goes on.

So what is the inspiration aspect of it then? Well, although Sakura's certainly doesn't live in a perfect world, she is doing the best she can to make it so. She's always energetic, polite and helpful. She and many other characters in the series share that positive attitude one way or another. The ones that seem to have a more negative attitude (like her brother) also reveal their good character traits sooner or later.

I know that cartoons and certainly CCS does not even remotely reflect real life. But after seeing a few episodes (and I've seen all 70!), you get that infectious positive vibe. That vibe inspires me to create what I see: a positive community. To be more specific: a positive, vibrant family. By having an ideal image in my head, I can draw the inspiration to achieve at least a little bit of the utopian image I get when watching CCS.

Labels: inspiration