Tag: parenting

Mildly Interested Parenting

“Instant availability without continuous presence is probably the best role a mother can play.” – Professor Lotte Bailyn

Reflecting on motherhood, the above quote really resonates with me. Our generation has often been accused of “helicopter parenting”, perhaps too many times circling around our children, with a tight and noisy presence that was hard for them to shake. Sometimes I kept my circling pattern too tight. Reflecting back, the times that I was in that tight pattern, it really was more about my fears and worries and trying to keep control, than really about what my children needed.

As my children got older, especially my sons, I noticed an inverse relationship to my rapt attention to them. The more interested and engaged I appeared in their lives and doings, the more they pulled back into themselves and into their shells, like tentative turtles. I found that a mild, nonchalant, bemused state of engagement, often got me better results in really hearing about the intricate details about what was really going on in their lives and minds, then a full-on engagement and uninterrupted enthrallment. Listening to their banter as I washed the dishes or paid some bills, barely glancing at my chatty children, was a much more likely scenario to glean golden gems of insight into my children’s psyches than wide-eyed questioning, face-to-face, in hard back chairs.

There is always that teeny bit of gratitude and relief when one of your adult children calls you from college or a lonely hotel room at a work conference, and in whatever subtle way, is asking for your advice and comfort. “Oh, they still need me,” is the joyous, excited thought that sends a warm glow from your heart to the rest of your body, as you prepare to listen and hear and convey your love. And then, at the same time, you quickly realize that you must try to temper your eagerness, to find a balanced, calm approach that will keep your grown children, open and trusting and connected to you.

“We have to bide our time and look for the moment of weakness when we can sneak back into their lives and they will see us and remember us for the people who love them unconditionally.” – Lisa See, novelist

Musings on Parenting

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

The above poem by Kahlil Gibran has always resonated with me when it comes to parenting.  Receiving compliments on my children has always rung false to me and it’s not because I don’t think they are amazing people.  I, like most mothers, think that my four children are the most incredible people on the face of this earth.  When I do receive compliments, I have a pat answer.  “Thank you.  God figured we couldn’t handle much.”  My children have been easy to raise, kind and understanding, and full of life.  If my husband and I gave them a stable and peaceful environment in which to bloom, which I hope we have, then maybe we deserve a compliment for that, but overall they are blooming into the interesting, talented and lively people that they are because that is the seeds that were implanted into them by forces much greater than I.   They are part of this unfolding Universe, part of God’s plan and my only job is to get out of the way and let Divinity take its course.  This is especially true now that they are embarking into their own adulthoods.

Years ago I read an article about Paloma Picasso.  I cut out the part she wrote about being a parent.  She said, “I don’t think the parent and child should be so intimate that it becomes a jail for the child.  I’ve tried to help my children become themselves.”  So the other day, when talking on the phone to my son who has moved out into his independent adult life, he kindly asked me what I had been up to since he’d been gone.  I proudly mentioned that I had started blogging.  I wanted him to feel comfort that I was branching out, listening to my own deep longings and taking brave new steps into new avenues of my own life.  I wanted him to feel as secure about me being okay and energized and positive, as I feel about him and his experiencing of his new journey.

One of my favorite books of all time, The Parent’s Tao Te Ching talks about the Empty Nest this way:

The “empty nest syndrome”

should never bother

parents of the Tao.

Of course we’ll miss our children

But all of their lives we have helped them

embrace life and welcome change.

We have learned to do the same.

New moments await us.

Our nest

and theirs,

is never empty.

I couldn’t say it better.