I found the story about the college-entrance scheme that broke yesterday implicating wealthy parents who were basically bribing their children’s entrance into college, absolutely fascinating. As a mother of three college-aged children and one almost there, it made me reflect on how much our own egos are tied up into our children’s accomplishments, often to their detriment, even when the original motivation, is for our children’s best interests. The problem is that sometimes we lose sight of the difference between what is in our children’s best interests and what is our own competitive, egoistic vision of their best interests. Greedy, calculating people are fully aware of this enormous parental ego machine and big, profitable businesses have bloomed because of it.
I’ll never forget when one of my sons played little league baseball when he was about eight years old. Several little boys on the team, already had separate pitching and hitting coaches. My husband, who had been a college athlete, asked me at that time, “Do these parents realize that most of these kids won’t even make their high school baseball teams?” Yet, travel teams for kids’ sports has become the way. If a child doesn’t play on a travel team, he or she is unlikely to make their high school teams and many travel teams dissuade kids for playing on their high school teams anyway, as they see it as a disturbance to their travel team play and not high caliber enough. Of course, travel teams cost in the thousands to play, not including all of the travel costs, sometimes with teams going out of the country to play. Kids are pushed to such a degree, that several of them have had medical procedures and operations, once only known to professional athletes, who have played their sport for decades. I know all of this first hand. I was a travel soccer mom for years and years. Several of my least flattering moments were on the sidelines of the games my kids played in.
Academics has become equally ridiculously challenging and competitive. I remember seeing many kids crying at various math and academic competitions as their parents angrily chastised them for mistakes made. When my eldest son graduated from high school there were more kids at the ceremony with accolades such as Magna Cum Laude, behind their names than not, a full reversal from when I was a kid. The pressure our children are under, is tremendous. When two achieving young men (one an Olympic swimming hopeful) in my middle son’s 10th grade class killed themselves, I decided to research what is often the cause of teenage suicide. I found out that in cities like Palo Alto where every parent wants their child to go to Stanford, one of the most prestigious, elite universities in our country and therefore almost impossible to get admitted to, teenage suicide is rampant. Authorities in Palo Alto had to install guards at the railroad crossings at night, because kids were committing suicide, in that style, at an alarming rate. We just lost Kelly Catlin, an Olympic cyclist and Stanford graduate student, to suicide. I cannot imagine the pressure she must have felt, that the only safety valve that she found able to relieve that pressure, was to take her own precious life.
We need to wake up as parents. We need to stop seeing our children as extensions of ourselves and instead help to nurture who they are meant to become, not who we want them to become. My friend who works for a large home remodeling association, often complains about the shortage of skilled labor in the market. Not everyone is meant to go to college and many people can make a very nice, comfortable, fulfilling living using their hands to create, and to fix things that are broken. I think a big problem of today’s parenting style, is that we have orchestrated so much of our children’s lives (all in the spirit of misguided love and “keeping up with the Joneses”) that our children themselves, don’t really know who they are, what their real passions are, and what they want out of life. It’s sad.
The ego itself is not a bad thing. We all have an ego and that is what keeps us alive and moving and motivated and inspired to keep ourselves safe. It is that lack of awareness about our own egos that makes things run a muck and allows evil people and entities to take advantage of our fragile egos. When we are aware of what motivates us, we keep ourselves in check. Most of us love our children beyond life itself, so we want to always be sure that what we are doing for our children is truly motivated by our love and guidance for them, to find their own inner potential, strengths and interests. We don’t want our motivations for our kids to come from our egoistic, narcissistic aspects, that in the end will only bring more harm than good, not just for them and for us, but also for society as a whole. When people bloom into what truly excites and motivates them, when people truly live and breathe their own passions, not for the accolades, but for the passion itself, we all benefit. I think that is what is meant by the idea that we are all One. In the end, we all have learned about a handful of the same few historic figures over the years, who have helped shaped our lives as we know it. Most of us aren’t going to be in that handful and I venture to say that what we have learned about those few stand-out historic figures, may not even be the truth, but just skewed stories from other people’s and other time’s perspectives. None of us are going to leave this world with anything, not even with our bodies. However, the innovations, the state of the natural environment, the governments, the religions, the businesses, the arts, the relationship styles etc. is what makes us One. These elements of life are our legacy and all of these elements of life are best when the individuals who make them up, are at their most authentic best. Our job as parents is to be gentle guides and nurturers, so that this Life that we are living and creating together, becomes the fulfillment of the beautiful One that it is meant to be.