Your Children Are Not Your Children

 

It’s strange having an infant and a teenager at the same time. As a baby, Charlie is completely dependent on us for survival. Though he is no longer hooked up to the ventilators, IV drips, and various machines that kept him alive during his first tumultuous months, it is still essential that we focus on his needs 24 hours a day, there’s no way he could fend for himself in this world. My daughter, Leah, on the other hand, is in the midst of the boundary-shaping stage of adolescence that will ultimately enable her to function as an independent adult. We are still responsible for her physical and emotional well-being, as we are with Charlie, but the goal with Leah is to begin to extricate ourselves as best we can and allow her to make decisions and figure out how to get along in the world—an exciting but frequently painful process to go through as a parent. While offering loving support, we have to let her work through more and more stuff on her own, including feelings of sadness, disappointment, and grief.

Because Charlie is so dependent on us, it’s tempting to think of him as a blank slate on which we can fashion the best person our collective wisdom is capable of. But is this really true? Are we Pygmalion to his Galatea? Henry Higgins to his Eliza Doolittle? Not bloody likely. While I don’t underestimate the important role and influence Kendall and I have as Charlie’s parents, I can also see that there are already aspects of his personality that are all him, not us. As parents, we can work hard to create a loving foundation of support and trust that will benefit our children throughout their lives. We can also fuck up our kids royally and ensure their future presence in therapists’ offices. (I guess most of us do a little bit of both!) But if there’s one thing I’ve learned as an older parent it’s that we are not creating our children out of whole cloth. There is no blank slate on which we can showcase our handiwork.

On the one hand, that realization is a relief (what if that tapestry was fashioned entirely from our neuroses?). On the other hand, it’s an affront to our egos and our narcissistic desires to see our children as extensions of ourselves. I think I did that a lot with Leah which is why the early years of her adolescence were difficult for me. I had to learn not to take it personally as Leah began pulling away and wanting to spend a lot more time with her friends than with me or the other adults in her life. Which, God knows, is as it should be, but it was still a shock since I was so used to being involved in every part of her life and activities. I remember hiding in the bushes at her school when she was in Kindergarten and watching her interact with the other kids, agonizing over every slight. Let’s face it, having kids is a wonderful, joyful, and painful process. Loving anyone that much carries with it the potential for so many different kinds of loss. Even when our kids are happy and healthy, there’s an element of loss we experience every day. I grieve the little girl that Leah was just as I enjoy and celebrate the young woman she has become. After everything Charlie has been through, Kendall and I already feel a bit of a panic that he’s growing up so fast! It’s hard for me to talk about these feelings because I’m happy and excited about all the changes we see every day, but they still represent elements of loss. Do I sound crazy?

I was talking to my dad on the phone yesterday and he said to me, “As a parent, I’m only ever as happy as my least happy child.” What? Of course I understand this sentiment and recognize that it's based in his strong love for his three children, but it is so rife with dysfunction I begged him to write it down and hand deliver it to a therapist. God love him, but it’s the kind of philosophy that has led to us keeping some of our feelings from him for fear of causing too much pain. Who needs that kind of responsibility? Sometimes Leah will want to tell me something that’s going on in her life but she’ll preface it with “Now, Dad, please don’t freak out when I tell you this.” Freak out? Moi? (Hey, stop laughing all those who know me!) I don’t want to be that dad hiding in the bushes crying because some snot-nosed Kindergartener snubbed my child. And I hope I won’t be anymore. Going through the ordeal of losing a child this year and watching Charlie fight for his life made me realize more than ever how we are all on our own journeys and how going through all sorts of painful emotions can lead to many gifts. I've also seen how our own loving actions work in tandem with aspects of our children that have absolutely nothing to do with us.

When Leah was born in 1994, we sent out baby announcements that included the poem “On Children” by Khalil Gibran. I recognized the beauty and wisdom of the words back then but I didn’t come close to understanding the poem the way I do now.

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.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
Which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
But seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

Comments

[Marilyn Molnar]

Danny,

You said it all perfectly and accurately ... parenthood is a work in progress. Keep on "working" with your beautiful family .... you're bound to get some things right! So far, so good.

Love,
Gramma Marilyn

[V-Grrrl at Compost Studios]

The process of letting go begins at birth. If my kids turn out well, I won't take the credit, and if they mess up, well, I won't take the blame either!

[Cynthia Reich]

Dear Danny,

Lovely post (and lovely children). But your father was right! So what? My 3 forty+ daughters still confide in me . . . I hope.

Love,
Cynthia

[Chris]

As I was reading your post, all I could think about was Khalil Gibran's poem. My mother had "The Prophet" on her bookshelf. I read it for the first time when I was eleven.

Beautiful picture of Leah! Precious of Charlie!

[Beth]

This is one of my favorite posts that you have written... beautifully written... exemplies parenthood so well.

[Otir]

Beautiful post, fascinating thoughts, eloquently shared with us. Your post mentions loss and the experience of loss, I have pondered the issue a lot, uncomfortable with the notion of "loss", probably for my own sake, and to protect myself from my fears and terrors of losing. I came to think that parenting is rather a matter of separation, a notion that resonates better for me, as it is also a central idea in judaism, the notion of lehavdil, to distinguish, to separate.

Letting go in this way, is to accept that we are separate. As parents, we can provide, support, encourage, guide, show the road, but we are still separate, and have never and will never experience what the other human being is experiencing as a separate human being. It can be frustrating at times, but it's a great human lesson.

Love is there to encompass. It is the ingredient that allows everything to exist, to co-exist, to re-create the initial order.

[susie specter]

what great timing for this piece danny as i adjust to my daughter arielle living in chicago! i am struggling with refraining from endless texts and e-mails to her along the lines of :"don't ride the el at night"! I continually affirm to myself this mantra " let go of the need to control". Luv, Susie

[Pam G]

What a wonderful expression about parenting and great photos of Leah and Charlie. How interesting to be going through both the teenage and the infant stages at once. My boss did that, too, and, as a person who never had any children and has very little, really, in the way of family at all, I can't even begin to imagine what this might be like but you have helped me to think about it.

[jason]

Well said, Danny! Beautifully put from two very different perspectives wrapped up in a single moment of time. And anyone who quotes from Kahlil Gibran has to be doing something right.

BTW, you asked, "Do I sound crazy?" Is that a trick question? ;-)

[Judy]

I agree with Otir...it is all about separation and love. I still remember when my son first told me he wanted to see a movie but not with me, but with his friends. Ouch, that hurt. I still have to remind myself to control my worries about my daughter living back in the boro of my childhood (Brooklyn), and not worry when she wakes up at 4:30Am and goes running in the streets. I also have to remind myself about those Gibran quotes every now and then. Our children do have their own karma after all is said and done.

[Judy]

OOps, I forgot i wanted to mention Oprah's magazine article by dylan klebold's mom about the columbine massacre. I read it at the library yesterday...an interesting read.

[churlita]

I have almost the opposite problem. I was an orphan at 10, and so I have always had to fight myself not to make them independent too young. It's my natural instinct to prepare them to survive if I died while they were still young and it's not healthy either.

[Julie R.]

Danny,
Thanks for another thought-provoking post. I was simultaneously sad and proud one night recently when Lily told me she doesn't need to be tucked in anymore. And so it begins, the march toward independence.

Julie

[Kirk]

The only true was we influence our kids is through our DNA.

[sweetsalty kate]

So beautiful. I've had it open for two days now.

[amba]

Danny -- I chose that Gibran passage to read out loud at my class's Reform confirmation. Imagine it coming from your teen-ager -- a beautiful slap in the face!

[amba]

Kirk: and even the DNA isn't "ours."

[Kirk]

"The only true was we influence our kids..."

I blame that typo on DNA.

[K Wild]

I love that line "For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams." But I think, as an earlier post you made recognized, that there is a linkage backwards. We can't go to the house of tomorrow, but our kids carry pieces of the house of today - and their parents - with them to that place, and in that sense, we do go there...

[elizabeth]

Beautiful post -- your Charles is a doll. As an aside, I have an eight year old named Oliver Charles who dressed as Waldo for Halloween!

[Melinda]

Danny, that picture of Leah makes her look like Bernadette Peters!

it is so rife with dysfunction I begged him to write it down and hand deliver it to a therapist.

LOL!!!

[david]

So it's OK that Gabe basically doesn't speak to me these days...?

[NeCole@Eclectic Ecstasy]

Just stopping by to say hello and let you know I'm busy formulating my questions. I'm enjoying your blog as I backtrack through it to learn more about you.