To get to the goal, we’ve got to let go. It seems to be a lifelong exercise that begins at birth, the birth of our first child.
As the story goes, a couple had three children. When the first was off to college, the mother took a week off of work to help her eldest settle in to college life. With the middle child, it was a three day weekend. The youngest she dropped off curbside at the university.
The youngest child, a fearless young reporter, who, among other adventures, was embedded with the Marines in the Afghanistan invasion, relayed that story to me with a laugh.
So you tell me – who was different, the mother or the child? Likely both, but from my vantage point, letting our children grow and go is more about the parent than the child. They’re prewired for the trip. We seem to have a different default.
Life delivers us children who are anxious to experience life themselves, to “do life” their own way and on their own terms. That’s the factory-installed version of a quick start guide, because clearly, a child’s best path to wisdom is firsthand experiences. We parents can deliver them to the university with that quality still intact, provided we haven’t spent 18 years extinguishing it by doing for them what they need to do for themselves.
Howard Glasser admonishes parents to “get out the way” of the child’s quest to test the boundaries. Inherent in that quest are creating messes, making mistakes and breaking rules – each of them excellent firsthand teachers.
That’s one of the reasons ENERGYPARENTS don’t issue warnings. We learn to get out of the way so children experience all of the above. We energize/engage to reflect their successes and the unique ways they demonstrate great character. We de-energize/disengage when they break rules or fall into negativity, getting them back on the positivity track with a simple reset.
Granted, it’s a lot easier to write about it than live it day-to-day. But it’s a make-or-break-it skill when it comes to the ultimate goal of raising a child with sufficient inner wealth to sustain him or her outside of our nest – whether that’s while he’s at preschool or college.
Navigating the balance of setting boundaries is perhaps most challenging during the teenage years.
To Our Getting Out of the Way of Greatness!