I recently re-read Carol Lynn Pearson’s amazing No More Goodbyes: Circling the Wagons around Our Gay Loved Ones for the second time because a woman in my very-Mormon book club picked it for us to read. For me, it was at least as inspiring and heartbreaking and maddening the second time as it was the first. It was a tough read for all of us, although perhaps for different reasons. Pearson doesn’t pull any punches. She’s a straight talker and calls a spade a spade. She also oozes love and compassion and kindness and really stresses the importance of listening to people’s stories in order to better understand them. She reminds us that an enemy is one whose story we do not know. I love that message.
So my very Mormon book club discussed what we had learned from the book and what some of the take-away messages are. Clearly, we covered the issue of homosexuality, since that’s the main theme of the book. We also discussed the related, but perhaps even bigger, issue of how to handle what happens when your child grows up to be or do or believe something other than what you had hoped. This quote by Rabbi Harold Kushner-one of my favorite modern-day “prophets”-is so powerful:
When you have a child, you start to dream of how this kid will grow up and make you proud. The only thing you can predict with 100% certainty is that the reality will diverge somehow from that dream. Some of our children will disappoint us by not being the scholars we hoped they would be. Some children will disappoint us by not being the athletes we hoped they would be. Some will disappoint us by coming out and telling us they are gay and they won’t give us grandchildren…the real question is not, what book can I read, what technique can I use to raise a perfect child? The real question is how will you handle that gap between the child you dreamt of having and the real child growing up in your home (p. 118).
If I could pause this blog post for a moment of silence in order to properly respect those words, I would do it.
The only thing we know for sure is that our kids will not “turn out” how we dreamed they would. How will we handle the gap between the child we hoped to have and “the real child growing up in [our] home” or-to extend the metaphor-to our adult children, wherever they might be living? How do we handle the disappointment that comes with seeing one of our children veer from the path we labored so diligently to lay out for them?
I have only a tiny bit of experience with this because my kids are young enough (8, 11, and 15) that I still mostly control their lives (cue the wicked laughter). I’ve had moments of disappointment. I fretted that one of my kids wasn’t going to be a reader. (Gasp! How can I have birthed someone who doesn’t like to read? Not liking to read is like being anti-babies or anti-democracy . . . right?) I really wanted Kennedy to play volleyball in 9th grade. She didn’t. The current gap centers around a certain someone in my house saying she wants to be on the cheerleading or dance team. It hurts my small, judgmental mind to say those words in public. (But seriously, how can someone with my DNA want to be a cheerleader? I thought 2 + 2 = 4.)
Those are mostly small things. I can handle a cheerleader (with some yoga and therapeutic massage, perhaps).
But I can see the gap looming up ahead. Before too long, they will be able to make decisions that diverge from mine in more significant ways. How will I handle that gap? A friend once told me that her friend’s mother sobbed on the floorboard of the car all the way to her daughter’s wedding because she was not happy about the person her daughter was marrying (and for the record, my friend assured, he was a perfectly nice guy-just not the son-in-law the mom was hoping for). No More Goodbyes is full of stories of parents so devastated and perplexed by the news that their son or daughter is gay or lesbian that they cut off contact with them. I’ve heard and read many stories of people who decide to leave the Mormon church; their family members similarly cut off contact with them. I read a sad comment on Facebook by a gay Mormon woman whose sisters recently told her that they do not want her to have any contact with their children (are they afraid her sexuality is contagious?). We can do better than this. We have to do better than this.
How will I handle the gap?
- What if one of my children is gay/lesbian?
- What if one of my children decides to leave the Mormon church?
- What if one of my children decided to convert to Islam? Or Judaism?
- What if one of my children doesn’t graduate from college?
- What if one of my children becomes (gasp) a Republican? (Confession: I did this to my parents for a few years. Sorry, Mom & Dad, if you’re reading.)
- What if one of my daughters decides to marry a loser?
These are all possible outcomes over which I will have no control. I hope I can take my cues from Carol Lynn Pearson and remember to ask myself this question:
“What if we are each in the correct classroom being assigned the correct homework, and what if the answer to the question on every test is to love a little more?”
I like your thoughts here. It is probably a really good thing to think about. I think since I am a person who left the faith of my parents I will be more tolerant of my children because I did that which caused me pain because of my parents reactions. BUT I think what if my child decides to go back to the faith of my childhood? I think I would be okay with it, but would I put my 2 cents in too much? Would I jab, when I could, the seeds of doubt towards my child? I hope not. Maybe thinking about what we would do ahead of time will help us respond appropriately when that time comes and I believe we all will have a time that our children do that which we pray they will not.
Snagging this from Lee on Facebook:
“Awesome post! Agency is more important than outcomes….I had a personal breakthrough in this regard serving as EQ pres in our ward. Control is bad. Unrighteousness dominion is bad…and it especially creeps in when we want something “good” to happen in our lives or the lives if those we love. Whenever I was trying to get people to do something I thought was good for them, like home teach, or have family prayer or whatever I would hear in my mind, “only by persuasion, long suffering, gentleness, meekness and love unfeigned.”
Children aren’t feathers in our cap. They’re people, developing and making choices. So how do you honor those choices? What kind of framework lovingly persuades teens but still honors agency? Is right to try to steer kids toward one party or one church? If it isn’t, how do you stomach letting them listen to rush limbaugh when all things considered is just down the dial?”
Lee, I love that so much: children aren’t feathers in our cap.
And how do you stomach Rush Limbaugh when All Things Considered is just down the dial?? Beautiful!
Thanks, Heather. Very nice post. I’m kind of going through the opposite right now — I’m veering from the path that my (adult) children expected and they aren’t dealing with it very well.
Strong work, Heather.
“What if we are each in the correct classroom being assigned the correct homework, and what if the answer to the question on every test is to love a little more?”
Beautiful, profound, and scary. I’m going to be thinking about that for a long time.
This is a beautiful, and much needed, post, Heather. This all hit me and my husband like a brick wall when our oldest was affected by severe chronic mental illness as a young adult. We (and he) had to face the fact that his life was going to take a very different turn from what we had all planned and anticipated for him. Indeed, we had to learn to love, and express that love, in ways that we had not known were possible. We had to learn to celebrate what he “is” and stop mourning what he “is not.”
Our children are not little miniatures of ourselves, and they do not come to us as blank computers for us to do all the programming (I just hate that analogy). They are independent/free spririts who happen to share some of our DNA. If my children grow up to be caring and responsible and know that they are loved, I have done the best I could as a parent.
Heather: I love how the art work reinforces the writing and vice versa. What a great image. In this context, I often think of children who experience life-altering accidents, sometimes at birth. It forces us to re-configure the purpose of life, if life is not for the traditional reasons that we think of as “success.” Our gay son? Our failure-to-launch daughter? A divorce? These complications are nothing in comparison to the parents who are caring for a physically disabled child or a teen with a closed-head injury or mental illness that makes them unrecognizable even to those of us who love them most. I second Catherine’s comments above.
Heather,
Wonderfully thoughful post. Thank you so much. Could you send it to my mother to read? ;o)
I think it is ok in such situations to allow ourselves a little time to go through the grieving process as we let go of our dreams for our child’s future and/or our own future. I think pretending we aren’t upset will be counter productive in the long run. I think a little bit of anger, denial, etc. are natural ways to handle large disappointments and work through to a healthier state of mind in the end. Hopefully it doesn’t take too long and along the way we won’t say too much to the other person that we’ll regret later.
Heather, this was fantastic. I really needed it. Thanks.
This is lovely, Heather. And I have now proved to myself how hard it is to do this right. I always think of homosexuality when I think of this issue, so I find myself congratulating myself on how I’m already ahead of the game here; I was raised just as homophobic as anyone, but as an adult I’ve come to very different conclusions about homosexuality and I think I would be just fine if I found out one of my (currently non-existent) children were gay. But then you asked, “What if one of my children becomes (gasp) a Republican?” And I felt a knot in my stomach. Then Lee said, “How do you stomach letting them listen to Rush Limbaugh when All Things Considered is just down the dial?” And now I know that I’m going to be just as bad as anyone about this. Sigh.
Do you think it would help to consciously try and brace ourselves for those possibilities, especially the ones that would be the most painful to us? If we spent years specifically saying to ourselves, “My kids might like Rush Limbaugh someday and I will love them anyway”? Obviously we can’t plan for every eventuality, but maybe the act of doing it would help even if it turned out to be something totally unrelated, like… I don’t know, becoming pagan.
Ahhh, I’m still new to the parenting thing.
But for the years I yearned for a biologic child I already had fears of the gap.
Now that my children are here, and they are not genetically mine in any way, shape, or form, I am not as scared of the gap. And I mean that in a beautiful way. I think the way they came into my life has made it much easier for me to see them as unique little souls, not any sort of extension of me, just their own little beings with their own path in life. Of course I will want things for them, of course I will try to guide them and influence them and hopefully help make their paths easier. I have a draft post in my blog that touches on this and I need to go finish it up and post it.
MyTwoLines, post it here, post it here! Would love to have a follow-up, point/counterpoint to share with our readers.
I love this! It pretty much just always comes down to loving people more. “All you need is love!”
Oh great! Now I have another thing to worry about as a mother (like, what on earth will it be that they’ll chose that I would be opposed to).
I think we have a good chance though of weathering this kind of storm by simply not expecting our children to be or do anything other than happy individuals. That’s what I’m shooting for at least. When I honestly think about it, I feel like I don’t have a lot of “dreams” for my kids, at least not yet. I do want them to grow up to be kind people, honest people, good people. But I haven’t given much thought to marriage, grand kids, education, sports, and the like.
I probably would also be shocked if one of my kids wouldn’t enjoy reading. Or wanted to do cheerleading, but I guess I could cope.
I think my only real fear is that my kids might grow up to be someone I simply cannot understand or relate to no matter how hard I try. And that then, they will not understand my love. Shudder. Scary. To me at least. I just hope they’ll grow up knowing that I love them like nothing else in this world. Everything else I don’t care about too much, even if they were Republicans and cried when they hear the US National Anthem.
I really like this post, Heather. Great application of CLP’s writing! My kids are still young enough (even younger than yours) that I haven’t really had to confront this at all. I have to think about what my kids might do or become that would disappoint me. One thing that comes to mind is that I remember talking about evolution with my 11-year-old son. He thinks it’s a super-cool idea and often asks me questions about it. I’ve warned him that some people at church think it’s evil, and that he might not get a warm reception if he talks about it there. I tried to use the “some people think / other people think” description. Of course, he just asked what I thought, and then said that he thought I was right. So that’s probably a point where my kids could disappoint me a lot: if they became anti-science creationists.
I hope it doesn’t happen, and this particular fear might not, but as you point out it’s a good thing to think about and be prepared for. Fran, I like your idea of only hoping for your kids’ happiness. I don’t know if I can restrain myself from having other expectations, but I do like your approach!
Gah! Thanks a lot, Ziff. Now I can add another fear to my list: fear of my kids becoming anti-science creationists!
When I was about 12, my family visited a museum in NYC (can’t remember which one) that had a big evolution exhibit in it. As we neared the end of the exhibit, I made a snarky teenager-esque comment–something like, “Well, all I know is this: I didn’t come from any monkey.” My dad politely escorted me back to the BEGINNING of the exhibit and we had a do-over. ;)
Ha! That’s a great story, Heather!
Heather, what a fantastic post. This book is now on my amazon wishlist. What a great reminder to love a little more.
I truly appreciate this post. I’ve been looking everywhere for this! Thank goodness I found it on Bing. You have made my day!