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Don’t tell your kid, you’ll never be disappointed in him. You will be. You are. When the child you’ve nurtured, the kid with a limitless future and a hundred joyful gifts, sells himself short, you’ll be upset, sad and angry. When he doesn’t go for the goal he wants because he’s convinced he can’t achieve it, you’ll be disappointed. When he gets in a relationship that only brings him grief, you’ll be frustrated and saddened.
Loving someone doesn’t mean always liking him.
You want only the best for your child and while life unavoidably brings bumps, some bad, ugly things can be avoided. You’ve lived long enough to know this. You may not have had people watching out for you the way you watched out for your kid. You’ve invested yourself in a thousand ways. Was it all for nothing? Did it matter at all?
A heart-warming card on Mother’s or Father’s Day just isn’t enough. You want the kid to take care of herself, to respect herself. All those lessons you taught her can’t have been a total waste. It’s not the kid’s thanks you’re looking for (although that’s nice to hear). You want her to live well. Make smart choices. Take care of herself.
You have hopes.
Then your kid does something really stupid, makes some choice you’d thought he was too smart to make. Some choices bring massive pain. Who would want their child to make those choices? Who wouldn’t be disappointed?
It’s not about a lack of love. You love this kid with every fiber of your being. When the kid hurts, your heart cracks open. The more you love, the more you hope for that person …always for the child. You want him to be smart, to see the choices that will lead him down painful roads in life. You’d thought he would have learned from his earlier experiences. The ones you carefully let him have when he was younger.
In a loving relationship, knowing how to let go is terribly important. Your child gets to determine her own course. Read the Unsolicited Advice Column that defines What Real Love Looks Like —letting your child discover her own path is more loving than telling her how to live.
Sometimes he’ll get it; he’ll believe in himself. He’ll realize the relationship he’s in has only more bad stuff ahead. He’ll realize he’s not giving himself the best shot professionally. Good things will happen, too. But don’t lie to yourself…failure is an option. Your kid may fail, may make—probably will make—foolish choices.
You won’t like the kid then. You may not get how she can make those choices.
You just hope the kid learns from it, wrings every ounce of learning out of those unhappy choices. All you can do is hope, because telling your child what to do—when she or he is an adult—just puts up walls. Don’t do it. Don’t think your kid needs to be told what to do. Even if he’s making stupid, foolish choices—spending more money than he has, not investing in your grandchild the way he should—don’t tell him what to do.
Even if you don’t like your child, you have to let her figure life out herself. Hopefully, she will. And then you’ll like her again, but maybe not now….
