A too-perfect mirror
All parents want their children to grow up to have more and do more than they. I would suggest that it goes further than this: that parents also want their children to be better than them. A sort of constructed evolution towards an ideological social goal. To be moral and polite and kind and hard-working and generous and thoughtful and fun-loving and honorable and easygoing and self possessed and a thousand other positive traits.
We are doomed to failure, but we can't help but try.
There are two reasons our (admirable) goal cannot possibly succeed.
1) If any one person had all those qualities all of the time, they'd be an inhuman saint and would have to be killed for making the rest of us look bad.
2) Children learn from their parents.
It's the second which is the real fly in the soup. Kids are built for constant learning. They learn from the world around them and most of their social interactions are necessarily learned from the people they spend the most time with and have the closest connection to - their parents (hopefully).
This means they are a horrifically true mirror, innocently exposing each and every one of our bad habits.
Knowing that our children will emulate us, we must hold ourselves up to the impossible ideal. Bad language? Banned, barring in extremis. Courtesy - must remember to thank everyone: implemented. Whinging and procrastination? Eliminated, honest. Prompt about chores: do I have to? Able to explain the rationale behind authoritarian rules rather than arbitrary punishments - really? Taking care of one's body: but when I'm tired and worn out, surely that third bag of chips on the couch is more interesting than a walk to the playground? Being strong enough to accept blame and apologise when we're wrong: good thing I'm never wrong.
Crikey, just do as I say and not as I do, okay?!
So we are aiming to train our children into something impossible, by letting them emulate a fake version of ourselves. What could possibly go wrong?! And yet we persist: our children deserve nothing less. In the process, perhaps we also might just get a few steps closer to that unattainable state of grace, if only in learning to have patience with our children and ourselves when we collectively fall short.
To do otherwise would not be human.
We are doomed to failure, but we can't help but try.
There are two reasons our (admirable) goal cannot possibly succeed.
1) If any one person had all those qualities all of the time, they'd be an inhuman saint and would have to be killed for making the rest of us look bad.
2) Children learn from their parents.
It's the second which is the real fly in the soup. Kids are built for constant learning. They learn from the world around them and most of their social interactions are necessarily learned from the people they spend the most time with and have the closest connection to - their parents (hopefully).
This means they are a horrifically true mirror, innocently exposing each and every one of our bad habits.
Knowing that our children will emulate us, we must hold ourselves up to the impossible ideal. Bad language? Banned, barring in extremis. Courtesy - must remember to thank everyone: implemented. Whinging and procrastination? Eliminated, honest. Prompt about chores: do I have to? Able to explain the rationale behind authoritarian rules rather than arbitrary punishments - really? Taking care of one's body: but when I'm tired and worn out, surely that third bag of chips on the couch is more interesting than a walk to the playground? Being strong enough to accept blame and apologise when we're wrong: good thing I'm never wrong.
Crikey, just do as I say and not as I do, okay?!
So we are aiming to train our children into something impossible, by letting them emulate a fake version of ourselves. What could possibly go wrong?! And yet we persist: our children deserve nothing less. In the process, perhaps we also might just get a few steps closer to that unattainable state of grace, if only in learning to have patience with our children and ourselves when we collectively fall short.
To do otherwise would not be human.