Individuating from your children

It is, to me, a psychological, psychodevelopmental truism that children need to individuate from their parents.  They need, in our culture at least, and I would stipulate this as universally desirable, to become their own people.

But in the same sense that Freud mistook the often very real sexual interest abusive adults took in children for their own fantasies–a politically driven but largely conscious error that still haunts us–I would assert that many parents have great difficulty in relinquishing the role of parent.

I was reading about the incoming class at Harvard a couple years ago, and most of these kids talked to one or both parents daily.  They never truly left home in some respects, not least because the parents did not want to let them go.

I would submit this is a two way street.  It is sad to see your kids go, but they are like an evolving work of art at loose in the world, taking continual new shapes and sizes and directions, which you cannot and should not try to control.  Build a strong foundation.  Instill common sense, pain tolerance, resilience, and curiosity.  These become their guides, not you.  Shit will happen, and shit should happen.  If they survive, they get better, hopefully, or at least different.

There is so much about life on this earth we do not know, but that it is about discovery, learning, and growth is to my mind an absolute fact.  Why should any parent keep their children from the game because they themselves never learned how to play?

I do think a certain amount of healthy selfishness is an absolute necessity for anything even approximating genuine liberality and generosity.  If you do not have a life of your own, you necessarily have to take it from someone else.  Their problems have to become your problems, because you have nothing else.

There is, in this sense, a fundamental homology between all-too-common helicopter parenting, and the leftist political orientation which underlies it.  They go together.

Put another way, the Democrats–even the ones who truly believe they are well-meaning–cannot let go of the blacks.  They cannot renounce their racist paternalism.  They cannot say “without us, they will still be absolutely fine.”

Life is about letting go.  Hold on to what is truly your own–your way, your truth, your path–and allow everyone else to do the same.