The other day, I was reading a blog on the New York Times Website, and the post - about investing too much of yourself in how you parent your children - generated a ton of interesting comments. Following is one of the comments I enjoyed the most:
"My kids are 30, 26, 23, 20, and 16. When they were pre-teens, I felt anxious about all sorts of things about our relationships. Then they got to be teens, and I became the Anti-Christ, especially to the oldest one, a girl. Then things got really bad. What will happen is that they will throw you out of their inner lives, and all this enmeshment will be a vanished dream. They will become utterly alien and you will have no understanding of how they think (because they won’t be thinking, in part). And then they will grow up, and they will be pretty nice, and fun to be with, and, to your horror, they will start talking about having children and will be TOO IMMATURE to have children, and then they will have children and grow up right away and do a pretty good job. You are who you are. That’s a given in their lives, that’s the diving board and the platform and there’s no use worrying about it. Your gifts to them are bad and good, and they will never appreciate you in the way you want them to, but will appreciate you in some ways that you will never expect. So relax."
1 comment:
Very thought-provoking. And according to *my* mother, your relationship with each of your children will be completely different, which seems obvious but also made me think.
Post a Comment