The Three Things We Will Never Know About Our Children
As I reflect back on the time and effort I put into parenting, I have to admit I never really knew what my children’s personalities would be like, what life choices they would make, or what they would choose to do for a living. Yet, in hindsight, I see that my husband and I carried a terrific burden, trying to mold their personalities, groom them to make the “correct” life choices, and pick a career path that we thought would be best for them.
With that in mind, let’s examine how much effort—and sometimes aggravation and emotional turmoil— we should invest in planning our children’s future.
We can never know the future personalities of our children. Surely, there are some predictable traits that we think our children will have for life. Wrong. My son, Navin, who was an extremely clean child—taking two or three showers a day —was also a very messy one. He would leave things around the house, his room was rarely picked up, and we constantly battled about that. When he moved home after graduation to join the family business, I was excited to have a child back, but I was equally concerned with the thought of going to war over his mess again.
Indeed, his habits hadn’t changed. For the first few weeks I would say things like, “Now that you’re an adult, I am concerned about how you will function in such a mess.” Or “How can you think clearly when everything is so messy?” Or “Your wife is going to beat you up if you don’t learn to pick up after yourself.” (I was careful, of course, never to use terms of separation like “This is my house, so my rules go.”)
My son’s response was always, “Please let it go, Mom. I’ll learn when the time comes. I’ll either do it or pay someone to do it.” But I was afraid that day would never come.
Last year, after living at home for three years, he bought his own place and moved out. I cringed at the thought of what his beautiful new place would look like in a week, but I reminded myself that it was not my business. He was a responsible 25-year-old. One month after he moved in, he hired the cleaning lady who had worked for me for several years for a monthly cleaning. She walked in one morning and said, “I cleaned Navin’s place yesterday, and I think you should know this.” I was sure that she was going to tell me how messy his house was. Instead she said, “No, it’s a good thing. His house is spotless—nothing lying around. No mess, no clothes on the floor, no dirty dishes. All I did was clean the bathroom and floors. Can you believe that?”
I was sure that this phase wouldn’t last long, and over the next few months, every time we stopped by his place, I expected a mess. But no, Navin has changed. He just isn’t a messy person anymore. Would I have ever imagined this? Never…in a million years!
I asked him recently what brought about this evolution. In a second he said, “Well, I wasn’t raised in a messy home, and now that I have mine, I like it to be clean.”
I think back now on all the time and energy I put into fighting over what I thought was an unchangeable personality trait. What a waste of time! Did Navin change because I let go, or did he need to pay for his space to start feeling a pride in ownership? I’ll never know. One thing became crystal clear though: Just do what you do best for you and let your kids be. Pick your battles wisely, parents.
We can never know the life choices our children will make. In high school my daughter, Nitasha, always talked about wanting to go to a university close to home. She wanted to be able to drive home over the weekend and visit with the family. And she said she would never leave sunny California to live on the cold East Coast. She even hated our occasional ski trips to the local mountains! Since our entire family—aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins—live in Los Angeles, and there were umpteen choices of great schools between Orange County and our home in Valencia, I was sure that she would either be a commuter student or stay within a 60-mile radius of our home.
My son, on the other hand, wanted to go as far away from home as possible. He is an adventurous and fearless explorer, always looking for new experiences, and he wanted to live on the East Coast for a totally different experience.
So how did this all play out? For her undergrad education, my daughter ended up choosing Santa Clara University, a whopping 313 miles from home. For graduate school, she chose Boston, where she weathered two of the worst winters in the city’s history. My son, on the other hand, attended Chapman University—exactly 60 miles from home.
Could I have predicted this? Not in a million years! I asked my kids what the deciding factor was for them. They both said, “You and dad always told us, ‘Trust your intuition and the school that is right will show up for you. When timing is right, you will know.” I can’t tell you how many years we spent speculating, planning, and worrying about what schools our kids would end up in and how we could “set” things up for them. What guided them best was simple: Trust life and your intuition, and it’ll all turn out ok.
We will never know our children’s career paths. Nitasha claimed at five that she wanted to be a pediatrician. Always interested in the human body, at 12 she declared that she was going to be a thoracic surgeon. By the end of high school, after reflecting on the difficulties of being a doctor and raising a family—something that was always very important to her—she settled on the more practical choice of dentistry. “If I choose dentistry,” she would say, “I don’t have to work weekends and can still make time to attend my children’s school events and stay involved with the family.” As she came to the end of her undergraduate years, she applied to several dental schools and was accepted. During her last spring break before graduation, however, she came home and had a complete meltdown. She didn’t want to be a dentist anymore! She would be graduating with two majors—biology and finance—and was now leaning toward the business world. In fact, she ended up working in the family business for three years, filling our dire need for implementing new technology, and then decided to go on to graduate school, earning a Masters in Information Systems and Operations.
Right before graduation, just for fun, Nitasha attended a forum held by the Walt Disney Company, after which she got an invitation to apply to that company’s Technology Management Rotation Program. After three months of challenging interviews, she was offered a position that she quickly accepted.
From pediatrician to thoracic surgeon to dentist to technology. We would have never imagined that this is where she would end up. How did this happen? She says, “In our family, I’ve seen how wonderful it is to do what you love to do. I just followed my gut and ended up here. I’m so grateful that you and dad left me to decide what I wanted for myself.” We spent a lot of time, money, and effort helping her chart a career in the medical field. But somewhere along the line, she changed her mind, and all we did was support her choice.
There’s a fine line between planning for our children—projecting our vision of what they should be and the choices they should make—and trusting that what is right for them will show up if we simply are authentic and stay connected to ourselves.
Life seldom turns out as we had planned for it. Why should it be any different for our children? If we constantly, grow and change and evolve, so will they. Our job then is to simply allow for it. This is how we can nurture their spirit and support the life that is their own to live and the choices that are their own to make.
So where should we put our time and effort? Where should we invest our parenting intention and energy? There are only two answers:
Be the best authentic person that you can be. Not for them but for yourself. This authenticity and connection is what they will dial into. And it models a powerful life benefit to our kids!
Put aside what you want for your kids, and pay attention to what they want out of their lives. We need to focus on supporting them in their own metamorphosis rather than impose what we think we want them to become.
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