Are you their obstacle?
My daughter used to listen, didn’t talk back, was impressed with everything I showed her and laughed at all my jokes. Well, that was nearly a decade ago! Now at the age of 11, and at the last year of her Grade 6 school, she’s the queen of the castle! Literally at the top of her class and school, she is emboldened by her clique of girlfriends and tag-along boys, the school is her roost to rule.
I am glad she has found birds of a feather with budding personalities strong enough to push the boundaries (within limits), question authority (in an inquisitive way) and challenge the status quo (to improve it). But for my daughter, those are the same tools she sometimes uses against me. Even though I am her beloved father, she will bear her claws at me under some circumstances. For certain issues, she won’t gently push the walls; she will kick down the door and storm the place. And if she’s capable of doing that to me, I can’t imagine what she’ll do to someone whom she doesn’t have kinship. But this type of behavior in her is very predictable and manifests under clearly specific circumstances. Understanding them helps me redefine our boundaries and ultimately her choices.
Limitation on her exploration. Children learn through play. They form social ties by interacting with people. Intellect will come, but from this age onward, friends are an essential aspect of personality development. Unless there are serious concerns with the people your daughter has befriended (which you should actively be aware), any unjustified interference is going to be met with the same natural force as trying to stop a river from flowing or a vine from reaching the light. She will find a way around you and it’s far worse if she does it clandestinely.
My job, I feel isn’t to be an obstacle in front of her, but guardrails beside her as she hurls headlong onto the adolescence expressway.
Imposition of your will. We all want the best for our children. But that pathway is often an elusive and confrontational one. Parents bring all sorts of baggage when raising their family. They want their kids to grow up to be doctors, dentists and accountants. They want their daughters to remain virgins until wedding night. They want their kids to follow their religion or run the family business. All of these may have legitimate purposes, but the imposition of parental conditions can sometimes suffocate the child’s own expression. They are children and don’t yet have opinions as polarized as ours. And just because they disagree with us, it doesn’t necessarily mean they are wrong. This is a universal problem with our society.
Elimination of her choice. Our society prides itself on the protection of personal choice. It is the yardstick by which we, in the west, measure societal contentment. And we especially instill this philosophy into our girls very early on with the thinking that it is their body, their minds, their choice. So we can’t in one breathe speak this way and undermine it with the next by stating that our choice takes precedence over theirs under subjective veils of good intentions. That’s not going to fly. As teenagers, our kids will either call us out or ignore us altogether. And yes, we taught them to do this! While I believe that choices should be defended, it must be informed and should never degrade the collective experience. The good of the many must always be weighed against the good for the few or the one. This balance takes time to understand and master. In fact, it takes lifetimes.
Parenting is a lifelong responsibility. My daughter is 11 going on 16. I hope we will continue to have multiple opportunities to improve our father/daughter relationship. That’s why I need to reframe everything because she does see the world differently than I. My job, I feel isn’t to be an obstacle in front of her. There are no hurdles for her to overcome that I need demonstrated. My job, I feel is to be the guardrails beside her as she hurls headlong onto the adolescence expressway. She is an unstoppable force that only requires guidance. Consider this: a child’s cognitive empathy or having the ability to see another’s perspective really only and meaningfully begins around the age of 13. Until then, she will take everything literally and personally. That’s not going to change overnight. But this is also the beginning of a new chapter where reason, rationality and an emerging social consciousness are viable tools that simply weren’t effective in engaging your child until now.
