You can’t copy-paste your feelings into your kids
I read something today that I’d read a thousand times before.
These words meant nothing to me a few years ago.
Just ink-on-paper. Something I skimmed over.
But now, after 32 years of life, I think it’s probably the most profound thing that’s ever been written.
Funny how that happens.
Anyways…
I take this realization as a parenting tip.
The fact is, I can give my kids all the books, quotes, and instruction that I want. But just because something is meaningful to me doesn’t mean it’s meaningful to them.
We can’t copy-and-paste our feelings into anyone else. Even our own kids.
So what’s most important, I think, is to give our kids the confidence to engage new ideas and new people genuinely and without too much pretense.
To help them listen and evaluate things “at face value,” and not preload their experiences with expectations and values that, deep down, don’t mean anything to them (yet).
Maybe you disagree. But I think too much “worldview” can get in the way of honest, face-to-face life experiences.
And if my 32 years of life have taught me anything, it’s this:
The best teachers are precisely these kinds of hard, face-to-face experiences. Challenging encounters that force us to figure out what, exactly, we think. Perilous circumstances, even, that either trim off the extraneous ideas we only thought we believed or reinforce things we, heretofore, had tried to believe but never truly understood.
(Even if they lead us down a somewhat different path than where we started.)
Life should be a teacher. A lifelong one, even. But especially when you’re young.
