This week my friend and her ten year old son are visiting me. On our first beach day he hopped on his bike and said he was going to ride to the beach. His mom, having been here before, told him how hard it was going to be to get his bike up the sandy path and he’d be better off with his scooter. Off he went on his bike. I, too, wondered how he was going to get that bike up a 50 foot hill of soft sand. But when his mother said no more, I just picked up my bag and followed her out to the road.
When we got to the beach path she and I started up the wall of sand and her son was behind us, laboriously pushing the bike. She saw me watching him. She turned to me and said, “You can’t tell him anything. And as long as he’s not going to harm himself, I let him learn in his own way.”
I broke over the crest of the hill, stood with her for a moment looking at the ocean while we waited for him to struggle up the hill with the bike. When he reached us, she told him it was downhill the rest of the way. He was relieved to hear this. She was neither indignant or righteous. She just gently told him it was downhill the rest of the way. She knew he got it and no “I told you so’s” were necessary to drive the point home.
Coming upon the crest of that hill I suddenly saw how absolutely ridiculous it is to waste energy trying to tell other people what or how to do something. She was so right. Offer an opinion, a piece of helpful advice, or a “how to”. Let others decide if they want to use it or not. Do not waste energy convincing them “you know best”.
People (and this includes children, too) need to make their own mistakes. Sometimes the same ones over and over before they change their course. Trying to push your own will into their process does not solve the problem for them. If only they would take your advice, their life would be so much easier and you would feel so much better about that. Too bad. It’s not about you.
In our quest to help others and make their paths a little easier, we forget that we all need hurricanes in our lives. We all need to sit in them for awhile and feel the effects of the spin. We all need to navigate the eye and figure out how to release ourselves from the spinning.
Watching someone you love spin in a hurricane is hard. Sometimes you have to set a boundary, let them have at it and be there to love them through it. It’s called parenting.
And so, as another day goes by, happy back to school week, best wishes to students and parents alike, and I have written.
Leave a Reply