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Don’t Act Like You Own Your Children

By Vinay Kolhatkar

October 9, 2014

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“You don’t own your children.” If those five words were ingrained in us, half the parenting problems in the world, and half the parent-child relationship strains would disappear. “No, I can’t bring them to your wedding, because they are not suitcases or trophies; they would rather be doing something else.” “No, he doesn’t like computer programming or mathematics, so just quit nagging him.” In some households, parents continue to control their children’s lives well into adulthood, sometimes even as children enter their thirties and forties.

Besides basic care giving, as a parent the principal help you can provide is to facilitate your children finding their central passion during their teenage years. If one is not there, suggest that they develop one, gently so. Ask them to go on a voyage of discovery about what it takes to achieve the goals they are passionate about; as a rule, the higher the goal, the greater is the effort required, the higher are the chances of failure. Then let go. Let go. Do not manipulate. Do not expect reward and gratitude, you do not have that as a right, no matter what your sacrifice; it was not bargained for by a young child. Do not expect anything. Do not sit there hoping this happens or that happens. Do not ever show off your children. Do not ever interfere in their relationships or manipulate their career choices.

Do not become a tiger mom or a tiger pop. Just let go. Let…go. It is a new, different human being. Watch what happens. Let the flower bloom. Why is this so hard to understand?

Parents are often nosey. They interfere. They preach.

For a start, parents are often nosey. They interfere. They preach. They firmly believe that they know exactly how the world works, while their adult children somehow do not. Why is that?

Culturally, the world has not yet fully evolved into a modern, industrial civilization. In a tribal society, the tribe feels like it has a claim on every individual. Tribal elders opine that the tribe does best when tribespeople conform, and no one rebels. Nevertheless, even a tribe functions a lot better when all adult relationships are voluntary, and modern society certainly does. “You don’t like jazz?” Fine, you do not need to go to a jazz joint. In a primitive, tribal society however, the chief decides what music is playing and everyone must go. Families must attend weddings and even lesser functions of related families. “You must go, as a representative of our family.” In a modern society, adults choose who they want to be with. In a tribal society, a chief gives his daughter’s hand in marriage to placate a warlord, just to get peace for his people.

The defining principle is—in a tribe, people (especially children) are things that can be traded. In a civilized society, every adult is a trader. We are trading all the time. At work, we trade effort, expertise, and results, for money and perks. We then trade money for goods and services that enhance our life. Time spent on one activity is gone forever. We trade time with chosen friends in activities that we think will make us happy, or spend it on an investment (like education, or wooing) which we think will give us more joy in the future. If I go cycling with my friend, I may be happier if she does not bitch and moan about her ex, unless that was part of the unstated deal. Good trades are the ones that pan out as planned, or better than planned. Just as in business deals, the victory of one does not mean the other side gets a raw deal. Two friends may both thoroughly enjoy an evening spent together.

Even in such a civilized trader society, the act of bringing children into this world must carry the responsibility of care giving. Three important questions arise. When does this responsibility end? Just what it is required in the period before it ends? What happens after it ends? The first two are very difficult questions. The third is easier, but not easy. Legally at least, the responsibility ends when the child becomes an adult. Care giving in the responsibility period is more than food, clothing, and shelter. It must necessarily involve performing a watchdog function over the child’s welfare.

Prior to the sudden sunset of the end of legal responsibility, many parents have indeed given their children much more than food, clothing, and shelter. There is education. There are vaccinations and vacations, health and dental care plans, tennis lessons and violin classes, and a whole lot of sermonizing. Are the parents entitled to feel like they are due something? It depends. The trouble is, these are not trades. The child did not negotiate these unless he/she did so expressly as a teenager. “If you buy me a car, I’ll finish college” is a promise the child must be held accountable for. The child however, owes no duty at large; he owes only what is expressly agreed to as a teenager or as an adult. Love and care must come from the heart, and the parent must put all expectations aside. Instead of lecturing to her, if you treated your child as a capable thinker, traded and negotiated with her like an adult once she became thirteen, and put yourself in her shoes to understand her feelings, the results should be pleasant, but please understand that there are no guarantees in life.

“Blessed is the man who has found his work. Let him ask no other blessedness,” said Thomas Carlyle.

“Blessed is the man who has found his work. Let him ask no other blessedness,” said Thomas Carlyle. Even atheists concede that he was right. Finding your central passion is not merely about finding what you like doing. It is about what you can be competitive at, while getting joy from it as well. Being able to enjoy playing baseball is no guarantee of being able to be make money playing it. Once your child finds his dream to chase, and comprehends what is required to achieve it, it is time to step away. It all happens automatically after that—the hard work, the planning, and the brushing aside of failures. The results will follow. Do not preach, or even express unsolicited opinions. The only thing to do is make the child aware (once is enough, they remember) that you are there if they need you—to lend a hand, to give a solicited opinion, to make a call, to travel with them if asked. Now sit back and watch the flower bloom, and never enter the garden uninvited.

Unfortunately, this takes faith, faith in the magic of self-motivation that most adults lack. Parents try to control their children’s lives. They force, or emotionally manipulate, their children into educational courses, colleges, residences, careers, status-based relationships, and marriages that the children would not have chosen as orphans. ‘All for their own good of course’—so goes the rationalization. At a lesser level, they push their children into accompanying them to events where they are shown off as trophies.

In China, Japan, South Korea, India, and the Middle East, societies are still extremely tribal.

In China, Japan, South Korea, India, and the Middle East, societies are still extremely tribal—the ethos of a trader society has not taken root. Even the Western world is deficient in this respect, only much less so. China is about the worst prototype one can draw upon. Youth suicide rates remain astronomically high, in part fuelled by irrational tribe-conforming pressures, much of it from parents.
What if your teenage child says he is going to experiment with hard drugs? What if he keeps producing academic results well below his potential? It should be possible to enter into discussions without preaching if the foundation has been laid in early childhood. If you treat a six-year old as a human who deserves to be heard and understood, he will likely consult you when he is sixteen. A leading psychologist affirms our hypothesis that supportive parenting, the type that recognizes that the offspring is a new human being in its own right, generates the best results. Authoritarian parenting could do much more harm than good, argues another psychologist. A recent study says that authoritarian parenting does not even produce high academic results. This should not surprise us—authoritarian anything does much more harm than good. Social ethos must move toward an individual-centric trader mentality, and parenting is no different.

 

 

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