What our Children Learn...

9 May 2024 Daily Meditation

Photo by Suzi Kim on Unsplash

Some of my most vulnerable moments come from realizing that at a time of weakness, grief or frailty, my children have been there as witnesses. How I wish I could have spared them that.

And yet, how else can they learn that this, too, is a necessary part of life?

Often, that inner critic that lives inside of me would have me turn away at times like this. I would protect especially my young children. But even my adult kids. I want to be the paragon of virtue, the “perfect” adult. I want to demonstrate the ideal to my kids, and show how our values show work in the perfect world.

What is that doing for them?

When they catch me living my real life, that is when they see that they, too, can be real. That is when they see that it is ok to be human. Life is learned by a series of trials and failures, and through these experiments, we learn what it is we believe. We learn what works and what does not. We try on a series of clothes and see what fits us. We shed the stuff that works, and go on to find a new set of duds. Each time we fail, we live to find a better thing, a new value, a kinder way through. That is real life.

Some of the real blunders, yes, I wish they didn’t see. I especially wish that they didn’t have to see the blunders, the fails I make with them. Like the time I lost my temper on my daughter at her horse show, because I wanted things to go a certain way. Really, she knew better in her 14 year old self, and she held her ground. It was a monumental triumph of her becoming-adult self, and I had to go back and apologize. It was a powerful growth of my becoming-parent-of-teen-self, and I had to make an amend, and we both became closer as a result.

These are the things that my inner critic would have me avoid. I’m grateful that I have grown to see I don’t need that inner critic.

Where does that inner critic come from? I believe it is the internalized voices of many conflicting things I didn’t understand as a child. Struggling for approval, I internalized those voices and they grew to be parts of myself. As I learn to self-observe, I see that the role they played in helping me strive for approval is no longer necessary. Slowly, I gain the courage to step forward into my own self.

Observing, pausing, choosing something different. Being present with my children, I see that they are ok with the vulnerable me. They possess a forgiveness that I sometimes lack with myself.

My children and I, we learn from each other.