 Who'd relax being a parent? We are now picking Richard up from Greenwich, London, with a removals van, if you please. The lad's given it his best shot, but it didn't work out. (Parents to the rescue.) Tom has recently passed his driving test, I'm filled with trepidation, knowing that his big brother was over-confident and wrote off one of our cars (you don't want to know our insurance premiums...!) Liz has just called me, "where's Tom?" "Damned if I know, he was on the way to pick you up..." You know, I just don't need this ****... Nick
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A Parent's Lot
Tom's home, followed by his mother, who got a lift from someone else.
I've got no finger nails left, but who cares?
It's the 'laissez faire' attitude that bugs me.
"I've turned down the hotplate, Nick, because dinner was boiling away furiously..."
The house could burn down, for all I care. (I've just renewed the house and contents insurance policy.)
I'm sorry folks, I'm tired and very puzzled.
Nick
Like Launching a boat ...
Nick,
An analogy that I often find myself using when I'm discussing the joys of parenting teenagers and twenty-somethings is that it's rather like launching a boat. Sometimes it just sinks. Then you have to haul it back out of the water, attempt to fix whatever made it sink, and launch it all over again. Sometimes it floats, and appears to be sailing away, only to get pulled back in by the tide. This time it brings back with it all of the detritus that it picked up in it's brief sojourn on the waves. And there's much much more. I find it to be a very fertile analogy, but with one consistent message, you can never float for the boat, it has to do that itself.
You can lead a horse to water,but you're never gonna make him drink,and you can lead a man to slaughter,but your'e never gonna make him think.
Tim
On Children
I do like Tim's analogy which I have never heard before but while bringing up my three children, I have always kept in mind the words of Kahil Gibran pasted below.
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 the 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.
Kalil Gibran
Its wonderful to see the poetry of Gibran here although I would imagine that the spiritual connotations may not agree with everyone, however, no one would argue with the beauty of the words.
Some younger friends of mine whose children are still babies suggest to me that since my eldest is 27 and youngest is 18, life must be so much easier. I always respond that little people give you little problems but big people give you big problems!
And so it is with your progeny. V still lives through the children and feels every bit of pain and anguish for them as well as the joy and happiness. The blessing of motherhood can also be a curse. Fatherhood is essentially different and has to be more emotionally controlled. My daughter's career as a singer songwriter is starting to bud and therefore I am witness to her desire to dress for the part. I do worry that my reaction may be seen as churlish and old fashioned but up to now I have been able to suppress my natural inclination to veto certain clothes choices on the basis that she's nearly twenty-one and therefore my opinion is probably outmoded. Fortunately, H has remarkably good taste and wouldn't be seen off stage in some of the gear that she happily performs in.