Sunday, October 22, 2006 Lim: Pulling away By Melanie T. Lim Wide Awake
A FEW days ago, I received a frantic email from a fellow columnist seeking advice about China. Her 13-year-old was eager to embark on this 55-day school trip to Xiamen. At the end of the week, the frantic mom came to the painful but sober decision to ask her son to wait until he was a few years older to go on the trip.
She was full of apologies in her emails. What she didn’t know was that I completely understood her. Like her, I am also a worrier. Like her, I am also fearlessly obsessive-compulsive. Like her, I also find it difficult to pull away from the ones I love.
But I have realized through the years that although our culture of close-knit family ties provides a strong sense of security for our children, it also, in many instances, paralyzes our children’s potential for growth. Our reluctance to pull away from our children inhibits their sense of independence because by refusing to let them go, we communicate to them our lack of confidence in their ability to succeed on their own.
When you’re young, the overflow of love is welcome. At 40, however, you want respect and dignity more than love and devotion.
Painful as it is, parents must start pulling away at the onset of adolescence. And when children reach the age of majority, it’s probably best for parents to face the facts-that they cannot wait till they’re six feet below the ground or until their children turn 50, whichever comes first, to let go.
As our children grow older, we should not attempt to undermine their ability to make decisions by imposing our contrary opinions at every turn. We should offer wise counsel. But we should learn to step back and pull away from the need to control their lives by respecting the choices they make.
We do not love them less by doing so. We love them more-when we love them enough to give them room to make mistakes.
It is a difficult balancing act to pull off-the art of stepping back at the right moment yet remaining behind your children 24/7 should they falter or fail. But when you succeed, you will finally see the absurdity of your overwhelming need to know your daughter’s every thought, word and deed. Yet, you will also realize the absolute necessity of stepping in to stop your daughter from marrying a man who will only make her weep.
I am not a biological parent but I do not think I love less. I certainly do not feel less pain when harsh words are hurled at me by my headstrong ward. I do not worry less about her because I did not carry her in my womb for nine months. Like most parents, I worry at every step. But I also recognize that I cannot be with her forever. Parting is inevitable. One day, she will leave. Or I will. And whichever comes first, I have to prepare her for that day in the future.
I don’t have much by way of material possessions to leave her. But if I can leave her or let her go with the sense of self that will allow her to believe she can take on the world, I know I will have left her the best gift I could ever give her.
