“I am not your property!” My 11 year old said this to my husband and I a few days ago in response to one of us saying, in playful tone, something along the lines of, “You’re my child and so this is what we’ll do!”
It reminded me of something i know but often let myself overlook: ‘our’ children belong to themselves.
I promise you, this is actually a freeing thought - for us, and for our children. (Because we know of course, that our freedoms are intertwined.)
It’s such a simple concept really. But the language we use around young people sort of hides this fact, and encourages us to believe they are, in fact, ours. Social pressures and a culture of intensive parenting has us thinking our children belong to us - they are ours to mould and shape, ours to micro-manage, ours to coerce into doing things that we believe they should be doing, into being the people we would like them to be.
The structures and systems we navigate conspire to assure and legitimize our belief that we do in fact know best, and that we do in fact have something called a ‘parental right’ which can trump the right of a child to their own autonomy and sovereignty.
But the truth is, they belong to themselves. The truth is, parenting that way - believing we own them and we can control them - blurs the line between us and them, and that is dangerous, both for us, running ourselves ragged and sacrificing our own needs ‘for their own good’, and for our children, growing up not really knowing who they are and what they want.
Really knowing that our children belong to themselves frees us, and them. It frees them to take charge of their own lives, to get to know who they really are, to fail miserably and pick themselves up again, with us by their sides as cheerleaders and partners. (Not owners with rights to their personhood.)
It frees us from having an attachment to the end result, from feeling like our children’s behavior, achievements and the people they become, are somehow our accomplishment. Are somehow our failure.
Whatever our children do or end up becoming - we cannot really be proud, nor can we be ashamed, because they are not ours and they never were. Do you see how it is freeing?
They will be proud of themselves. We will cheer them on. We will be there when they fall.
It frees us to see them as separate people who deserve our friendship and respect, our unconditional love, but who are also “sovereign nations”, as Iris Chen so beautifully puts it.
It frees us to turn towards ourselves and our own, one life.
Yes we will raise up free, aware children, but what else will our life be? And who are we, and how do we want to show up?
Not only because our children are watching, but also because we deserve to find out, for us
This post in from an instagram caption I wrote on October 7, 2022, with a few modifications, and is part of my effort to move my writing from IG to Substack in order to preserve it.
Life has had some challenges recently and I’ve had to cut down on a lot of commitments. I’ve interrupted my Masters studies for the year and am struggling to find time to write. And so with that in mind, I appreciate everyone’s continued support on here, it really does mean a lot.
Book Group people, if you missed it, we are meeting on zoom to discuss October’s book on Thursday 30th, all details in this post.
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