When kids are young, life's easy: give them all your love, some decent food and the occasional nappy change and everything's fine. But children have this annoying habit of growing up and demanding more of you. It's no longer toys they need, but advice, some sort of guidance, on the assumption that you the all-knowing adult must have meaningful insight on the many issues they're faced with as they spread their wings to fly out in the world.
It's not about telling children what to do or set strict rules, as I am not into that. This is simply about advice or opinions your children will seek of you, whether it concerns them or friends of theirs. It is a hard time for parents, as at some point they will be forced to admit they are just as clueless as their confused teenagers – which is the right thing to do, as there are many adults out there who are in complete denial and would never admit to not having a clue.
Many adults end up choosing to ignore the struggles of their younger selves, their mistakes, taking the wrong path, screwing up things. Even worse, refusing to acknowledge their own mistakes they never bother to look back and try to understand what made them do a certain thing. There is a strong resistance to accepting you are not perfect and you might have made mistakes, as that would ruin your whole self-image. The problem is that, if you don't make any effort to understand yourself and the decisions you've made in your life you don't stand a chance to understand what your children are going through, not to mention helping them with some word of advice. With a teenage daughter and a son on the verge of tweendom, I have been forced to to a lot of thinking lately. Usually at 4 in the morning. And sometimes I realize that I just don't have the answer to a particular issue. All I have are my personal experiences, good or bad – but these are strictly mine, they do not apply universally.
One of the things I hate most is parents who are unable to make this distinction between personal and universal and try to impose on they're children their own flawed perceptions on life. Like a woman who ends up realizing her married life has not been happy at all and instills in her own daughters the idea that men are to be avoided – failing to see this concept is based on just one experience, her own. I know many young people would simply ignore such advice, but the endless drilling of such notions into their heads is enough to seed doubts and fears. All it takes is just one bad break-up for the fears that had been lurking under the surface to raise their ugly heads. 'Mom was right, after all.' Have them fly back to the safety of their nest, even though it is filled with bitterness and deceptions.
As I was thinking about this at the ungodly hour mentioned before, I came to the conclusion that children are better off when their parents have the decency to admit they don't have the answer to a particular question. And make it very clear they will be there to support their children no matter what they decide and, no, they won't be disappointed with that decision.
