Over the weekend, pictures have surfaced of Ciara attending her boyfriend, Seattle Seahwaks quarterback, Russell Wilson, and her son, Future Jr. giving him a hug. If you Google Russell Wilson, the first thing my browser automatically filled in was “and Ciara,” followed by “and his girlfriend.” Upon pressing enter, the first few articles to come up were about him, Ciara, little Future, and Future Sr.’s response to this, even though the man just signed a contract that made him the second-highest paid quarterback in the NFL.
People really do care about this. Ciara and Wilson have been dating for a few months. At first, the consensus was how darling they looked as a couple. Then, pictures of Ciara, Wilson, and Future Jr. gong for a leisurely walk while Russell held down stroller duty. There was talk for days about what people thought was wrong in this situation. Everything from “It’s too soon,” “What does Future think of this,” and virtually everything else under the sun. While promoting his album <em>Dirty Sprite 2</em>, father Future gave his take on this:
"Of course I wouldn't want anyone to push my son…That’s like the number one rule. If I was a kid, and my mom had a dude pushing me, I would’ve jumped out the stroller and slapped the sh*t out of him."
People break up and single parents move on. They date other people and the new significant others formulate bonds with the children. If someone comes along and loves their new girlfriend/boyfriend, often they love the child, also. Being a parent becomes part of the personality that they fall in love with. As a single parent, if someone wants to take on the paradigm that is my daughter and I, that is a beautiful and selfless thing.
This is Ciara’s first child. Like we all have, she is figuring things out on the fly. The first kid is the experiment. In the public eye, this is the first person that she is dating since she and Future broke up. While many believe that someone shouldn’t have their children around significant others so soon, apparently she doesn’t feel that way. If things don’t work out, she may try things differently the next time. Nonetheless, this is how she is handling her relationship, as well as the one developing between her son and new man.
One of my psychology professors—who specializes in education—once said something to me that always stuck: "Children are geniuses until they are about five-years-old, and then their parents mess it up."
It’s true. Children are more aware of who people are than we give them credit. At four years old, my daughter knows the difference between my platonic friends and women that I’m dating. Hell, she even has an idea of what my “type” is.
Her mother has been dead since she was nine months old, and yet no one—even a girlfriend I was with for two years—could take the place of her mother in her eyes.
That fear—that another person will take my place as a parent in my child’s eyes—seems to be behind the Future-Ciara-Russell Wilson controversy. That Ciara is taking Future Jr. to football camp to see her new beau Russell Wilson is not sitting too kindly with the father of her child, Future, the Atlanta rapper.
But Future had Ciara around his other kids (he had three kids by three different women before getting with Ciara) so it’s not like he’s completely innocent of that kind of behavior. At one point Ciara was his new girlfriend, and he brought her around his kids.
But it seems that when the shoe is on the other foot and Future sees a guy hugging his son, and playing “daddy,” all of sudden, he’s got a whole lot to say about how it’s too soon for Ciara to have a new man in his son’s life.
But he shouldn’t fret. At a year and some change, Future Jr. knows who his father is and that Russell Wilson is a special someone to his mother, even if he doesn’t understand exactly how or can’t quite articulate that relationship.
On the other hand, there is validity in the backlash. Many people would feel a way about the significant other of their child’s parent pushing a stroller or being spotted at their place of work. People have done more than send some tweets in the direction of all parties involved for being around when their kid is being picked up from school. That’s mostly pride and ego. There’s no need for Wilson to have a conversation with Big Future or any of that. If anything, that is between the parents of the child. If they don’t see eye to eye on this, they have to rectify it. Whether they married or not, Future and Ciara will both have parenting styles that at times will conflict and they will not agree. That’s part of how parenting works.
How people receive information is a reflection of self. People will look at a situation, see themselves in it, and ultimately pass judgment based on their experiences without really understanding-or caring to understand-any other paradigm but their own. It is very easy for anyone to support or oppose how Ciara, Russell Wilson, and both Futures are living their lives separately and being interlocked together for the time being or forever. What means more than any picture, tweets, or whatever are Future’s words right before everyone ran with the headline: I just want her to be happy.
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