A friend sent me a really great article on parenting. It was called Raising Your Successful 35-Year-Old. In the age of helicopter parents, it talked about being a lighthouse parent–where the goal isn’t to constantly hover and fix, but to be visible for your children as they navigate their own smooth or choppy waters.
Because while we want to protect our children from harm,
what we too often end up doing is protecting them from learning.
Our job is to keep them from drowning, but not do the sailing for them. Wanting to protect our children is completely different from being able to. I think we’ve begun to believe, that if we are the perfect parents we can keep our children safe, although it might come at the expense of our sanity and our children’s autonomy.
The truth is, we are never completely in control. There are things like luck and chance in the world. Sometimes they are good, sometimes they are not. They are always the wild card. Perhaps the best we can do is be the light that allows our children to see what they are really up against. And if we’re really lucky, they will also have paid attention to what we’ve illuminated about ourselves.
Any thoughts?
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