Kids always become adults, duh. Everyone becomes an adult. But do they really? This question has been in my head for a long time, even before I became a parent. Arrested Development: hilarious tv show, underutilized term for “adults” in name but not in behavior. You can grow up, but if you don’t get to the point with your parents where you can see them as humans, understand they have flaws and that they’re just doing their best like everyone else, then are you really a grown up?
This is a massive step on the path to becoming truly independent and self-actualized. It’s not the only task to complete on that path (there are many) but it’s one of the most difficult for some people. It can take a long long time, but once it clicks for you it’s a gamechanger. And the level of difficulty lies in your childhood and the maturity (or immaturity) of your parents. Bottom line, if your parents never became adults it will be much harder for you to do so. I have a ton of respect for people who overcame their parents’ flaws and self-actualized despite many reasons not to.
I write this coming off a week-long stay at my mother-in-law’s house lol. There are many takeaways from the experience (shoutout to my parents for being normal), but the most important for me has evolved from helping my wife overcome the challenges of her relationship with her mother, to ensuring that my son eventually sees me as an equal and our relationship becomes one of mutual respect. This is something that I’ll be thinking about for the next 20 years and working on. For now, I give him responsibility and autonomy. I let him struggle and figure things out for himself. I listen to his opinions and show interest in his choices (he’s 5 so I don’t always let him follow his choices though!). But the point is, we can start building responsible adults early on, and our actions now help to create real grownups in the future.
Apologies for the delay in this week’s post, I had a 9 hour flight in which I needed to entertain a small child for the duration, which resulted in me being wiped out and jet lagged, and resulted in our son being extremely disregulated. I’m sure a lot of you know how that goes, these are the unique difficulties our children face. If you have any feedback, or things that work for you in those moments, as always please send them my way!