The connection we keep – or lose.
We meet our children when they are born. But do we keep meeting them as they grow?
Take a look back into your experience as a child.
When you were born, you relied on your parents for shelter, food and knowledge. They taught you, and you adapted to their expectations. You started off sharing the same values as them. This was your “normal”.
Your next milestone was attending school. Suddenly you faced expectations from teachers and social pressure from peers – out of your comfort zone. Someone teased you for pronouncing a word wrongly, and you felt your cheeks turning red.
Someone pushed you and you felt that urge to push back.
“Why is the world so unkind?”
As you grew older, you met more people, experienced more of life. You started to understand yourself differently. Some of your values no longer matched your parents’. Who is right, and who is wrong? Am I becoming a copy of my parents? Should I change to adapt to this world?
“Why did the world become so confusing?”
Somewhere along the way, the connection with your parents weakened.
Every parent responds to these moments differently. But the experience, a child’s world expanding beyond home is universal. And it’s a necessary one. It’s how they begin to understand who they truly are.
And now you’re the parent.
How safe do you feel being yourself in front of your parents? What kind of connection do you want your child to feel with you?
The connection doesn’t weaken because they changed.
It weakens because we stopped updating who we think they are.