"What I'm saying is, when we treat grades and scores and accolades and awards as the purpose of childhood, all in furtherance of some hoped-for admission to a tiny number of colleges or entrance to a small number of careers, that that's too narrow a definition of success for our kids. And even though we might help them achieve some short-term wins by overhelping -- like they get a better grade if we help them do their homework, they might end up with a longer childhood résumé when we help -- what I'm saying is that ALL OF THIS COMES AT A LONG-TERM COST TO THEIR SENSE OF SELF. What I'm saying is, we should be less concerned with the specific set of colleges they might be able to apply to or might get into and far more concerned that they have the habits, the mindset, the skill set, the wellness, to be successful wherever they go. What I'm saying is, our kids need us to be a little less obsessed with grades and scores and a whole lot more interested in childhood providing a foundation for their success built on things like love and chores..."
No matter how philosophical Kahlil Gibran sounds when he says 'Your children are not your children' or how profound 'Abraham Lincoln’s Letter to his Son’s Headmaster' seems or how sentimental Alice E. Chase gets when she writes her heart down in a poem, 'To My Grown-Up Son', Juile Lythocott-Haims has nailed it with her absolutely stunning spontaneous style of delivery with a little humor to spice it up. I am wholeheartedly with Julie when she says, '...and it's my job to provide a nourishing environment, to strengthen them through chores and to love them so they can love others and receive love and the college, the major, the career, that's up to them. My job is not to make them become what I would have them become, but to support them in becoming their glorious selves...' Indeed!
And the metaphor of Bonsai is the one that I love like anything... I mean there cannot be any better analogy or explanation, for that matter, for how the over-parenting can harm the potential of any kid. Just imagine planting a seed with a potential of becoming a Banyan Tree with a dense foliage that can provide shelter to handful of animals in its shade is being truncated and reduced to a Bonsai just to make a show-piece of it for decorating the drawing room of one house; it's not only conveniently bourgeois and orthodox but strategically criminal and cold-blooded, I believe! No offspring is a possession or property of its biological parents, it is just a carrier of the DNA for succession planning by the nature with completely new, independent and self-responsible identity that develops in due course.
Secondly, being a CSR Consultant and an ardent follower of the 'Trusteeship' theory, I hold it that an Individual and the Society are inseparable and have a integrated course of existence explained by UBUNTU, and thus an Individual in its forming (or 'developing', as the 'politicians' love to put it!) stages receives a lot from the society and it owes everything to the society and should always feel indebted for whatever it has 'achieved' and apart from being grateful, 'paying back' is the great way of showing reverence for what's been received. The purest and most profound form of payback is to gift it Individuals that might have borne from us biologically but have developed into free-thinking and socially responsible active elements of the society who can lift it up towards peace and prosperity.
We are glad, and proud, that we have been successful to that end, at least till this point. And there cannot be any greater or better measure of meaningful life than being successful parents; parents who can bring up such children! Although we might have come halfway, we are still learning and practicing the Art of Parenting to become sensible and responsible parents, as there is no Convocation in the course of Parenting, only Graduation...!
Way to go...
