Learning The Lessons Of Parenting Through Our Teens

The Lessons Our Children Teach Us If Only We Would Listen

Even though it has been over a decade ago, I remember what it was like when I was pregnant with both of my sons. Even though I was responsible for their development I truly had no control over them. Of course I could control my diet, exercise and my daily routine, but they were developing in their own way and I provided a place for them to do that.

Both of my boys were late, and it drove me crazy, I had a due date and they were supposed to arrive on that day. After all I had an agenda, maternity leave from work and an action plan.  Two long weeks later I had to be induced with both pregnancies. I showed them, they weren’t going to make me wait any longer! Little did I know, or understand at that time. The second pregnancy, the delivery was much easier than the first, the body remembers, but I guess not the mind.  Then again another interesting observation,  my second son has had a smoother time in life than my first. What does all this mean? Now they are teens I can see the patterns, I never wanted to acknowledge before.

Profoundly, I provide a safe home for my teens, food on the table and try to set good examples. While all this is important I am learning the more I want something to happen or for them to do something,  they push back at me.  I have very little control over who they want to become and how they are going to get there. I can make suggestions or relate my experiences, but I must learn to let go and detach.  This has been another one of life’s tough lessons for me, I don’t know why I always thought it would be different for my kids, but it truly is no different for them than it was for me when I was a teen. I wanted independence and to get away from the controlling environment of my parents. Why does it have to be like this?  Why don’t we learn through experience and move forward with change. As parents we think we have the crystal ball and want to save our children from OUR mistakes, OUR suffering and  make THEIR life better. Obviously we can’t save them from THEIR own mistakes.

When I was a teen I remember reading The Prophet, by Kahlil Gibran and one passage  meant a lot to me then, and continues to have even more meaning for me now.

You may know it:

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of Children.
And he said:
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Buy the book at Amazon:

The Prophet (Wordsworth Classics of World Literature)

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Tagged as: independence, Kahlil Gibran, parenting, teens