A Les­son About Grow­ing Up

This is an extra arti­cle, which came to me as I was lis­ten­ing to an audio book. The char­ac­ter was talk­ing about life extension—living 150–200 years. He said some­thing to the effect that 5–10 gen­er­a­tions might be alive at the same time. I thought about how many inter-generational issues clients bring to the table, and I had one of those “Aha!” moments.

Many of my clients are “Boomers,” and many of them are ‘squeezed’ between their liv­ing par­ents and their kids. I want to frame what I’m about to show you with this:

The goal of par­ent­ing is to raise your kids
to be inde­pen­dent adults—
and the age of inde­pen­dence is 18–20.
Always has been, always will be.

Prior to this mile­stone of 18–20, par­ents edu­cate their chil­dren—to live in the per­ceived world. In other words, par­ents social­ize their kids to be able to func­tion within their cul­ture. Thus, one would expect to see dif­fer­ences between East & West, reli­gious and non-religious, as well as faith-based and polit­i­cal differences.

The com­mon denom­i­na­tor is this: kids (let’s split the dif­fer­ence) at 19 should be on their own, and mak­ing all of their own deci­sions, sup­port­ing them­selves, and being treated as full-fledged adults.

In other words, mak­ing deci­sions and liv­ing with the con­se­quences of those decisions—not, emphat­i­cally, being bailed out by mommy and daddy at every turn, nor lec­tured to on into their 50s.

Here’s What is Really Happening

This is not what I see.

Let’s cre­ate 3 gen­er­a­tions. We’ll call them

1. The Par­ents (age 60+)
2. The Kids (age 40ish) and
3. The Kids-Kids (under 20)

The Kids are caught. They’re try­ing to be friends with their kids (The Kids-Kids), as opposed to par­ent­ing them. They think their kids are basi­cally clue­less, and expect to be telling them what to do for years to come. Why?

Because their Par­ents are still doing this to them!

I can’t tell you how many 40-somethings I know who say, “My mother is mad at me for doing (fill in the blank.) I’ve got to fig­ure out how to get her to like me again!” Or, “My father won’t speak to me until I apol­o­gize.” Or, “I’m not sure what to do. I’ll clear it with my par­ents.” I want to scream.

The image I got yes­ter­day, lis­ten­ing to the book, involved num­bers. Here we go.

Par­ents, dur­ing one’s child­hood years, are con­sid­ered wise and all-knowing. It’s because they are big, and know stuff, and have the power of life and death over their kids. When the kids become teens, they start to see through this, and real­ize, at some level, that their par­ents are human. Bud­dhists would say, “No one spe­cial.”

How­ever, default­ing to the par­ents (mak­ing them ‘spe­cial’,) is hard wired from infancy/childhood and it takes an effort from one side or the other, to ‘cut the apron strings.’

Here’s the math. Let’s give The Par­ents a ‘wis­dom score’ of 10. The Par­ents got this score before The Kids knew any bet­ter. I picked the word ‘wis­dom’ to be the short­hand for ‘life-experience and func­tional intel­li­gence.’

The Par­ents look at their new­born kids and think, “Yikes! The Kid knows noth­ing! (True!) But I love the lit­tle bug­ger, so I’ll opti­misti­cally give him/her a ‘wis­dom score’ of 5.”

(In the teen years, this might be raised to 6, or low­ered to 4, depend­ing on the level of stu­pid teen behaviour.)

Now, here’s where the last 3 gen­er­a­tions or so have screwed up

At our magic age of 19, The Kid is sup­posed to be a wise, fully func­tion­ing adult, and thus to grow up. In other words, he or she must change their ‘wis­dom num­ber’ to 10.

See where I’m going?
How many level 10 wise adults
do you know?

What really hap­pens, and I see this a lot, is that The Par­ents con­tinue to rein­force the 10/6 dichotomy with The Kids, and/or The Kids con­tinue to mind-less-ly default to The Par­ents.

• I have one friend who, at age 62(!!!) finally said ‘no’ to his par­ents, and broke off con­tact. He, how­ever, is still ‘look­ing out for’ his mid-30s son… who, inter­est­ingly, is a suc­cess­ful businessman.
• Another friend, mid-40’s, has, since I’ve known her, tried to be her ‘mother’s friend.’ It never worked out, and she was mis­er­able, but she kept try­ing. She, too, drew a line in the sand with her mom, and the mom responded by ‘fir­ing’ her until she apol­o­gized. When they later talked, the mother blamed the daugh­ter for ‘not behav­ing right.’

In all cases, the prob­lem is that The Kid has not claimed full-bore adult­hood. Why? Part of it is tradition—I ‘should’ defer to my par­ents. But why? Par­ents aren’t mag­i­cal or spe­cial. They are just peo­ple like you and me. They may be wise about their own lives, but they have no clue about their children’s lives. Cer­tainly not more that The Kids themselves.

(Want to see a con­tem­po­rary ver­sion of this in TV? Tune in to an episode of “CANE” and watch a group of 20 to 40 some­thing adults play, “What would poppy do?”, as ‘poppy’ sits there spout­ing and puff­ing on a cigar…)

One rea­son The Kids refuse to grow up is that it’s eas­ier to blame The Par­ents when things go wrong. We’ve talked about this a lot on this Blog, and you know how impor­tant I think self-responsibility is. This is a hard sell, how­ever. And The Par­ents col­lude, as their self-image is tied up in the suc­cess of The Kids, whom they still see as “A ‘6,’ and stu­pid to boot.”

More Math

Now The Kids have The Kids-Kids. The Kids, remem­ber, think of them­selves as ‘6’ (to make a joke, ‘6’ is the new ‘10’… hmm. We’re all going to hell in a hand bas­ket …) and think their kids, The Kids-Kids, are in need of guid­ance. So, they make them a 6 to their 6. This is a 4 to The Par­ents’ 10. Do the math.

Even if you kill off The Par­ents, there’s a prob­lem. I keep hear­ing, “I can’t be the old­est gen­er­a­tion. I’m not old enough. When I hear ‘Mr. Smith,’ I look around for my dad.” And this crap comes from 50-year-olds.

Even if the almost adult revises their think­ing and decides to be an ‘8,’ our world is diminished.

The solu­tion

The only way to solve this is the scary idea of grow­ing up and stand­ing foursquare on your own two feet. If Your Par­ents are alive, let them know that you are no longer inter­ested in being their child, and then refuse to act like one! Let them know that you are will­ing to involve them in your life as inter­est­ing peo­ple (or not…) but not as the peo­ple who decide who you should be or how you should be. That’s your job.

If you are The Par­ents, give it up! Your job ended when each of Your Kids hit 19, and you’ve been cling­ing on by con­tin­u­ing to look for flaws to exploit in Your Kids. You did this to feel supe­rior to some­one, and to con­tinue to run their lives. You’ve likely come up with all kinds of excuses, and sighed, and said, “What other choice did I have? With­out me, they’d have screwed up.”

And what do you think is going to hap­pen when

you curl up your toes?

Adults stand on their own two feet, make deci­sions based upon the imper­fect knowl­edge we all have, and fail and suc­ceed in equal mea­sure. As the Japan­ese proverb goes, “Fall down six times, stand up seven.” It’s impos­si­ble to learn if The Par­ents keep prop­ping The Kids up.

The vast, vast major­ity of human­ity does not ever live up to their par­ents’ expec­ta­tions, not because they are flawed, but because the expec­ta­tions belong to The Par­ents.

The eas­i­est way out of being a ‘6’ is to
stop act­ing like one,
grow up,
claim your unique ’10-ness,’ and
get your own life.

My mom, to the day she died, tried everything…tears, recrim­i­na­tions, praise, ‘sug­ges­tions’… to get me to live my life her way. I loved her, and accepted that this was how she was. I would say, “And when was the last time I did some­thing you wanted me to, just because you wanted me to?” She’d sigh and say, “When you were 17.” I’d smile and reply, “Notic­ing a pattern?”

Are you a 6? Or are you a 10?

With plenty of math les­son plans and other kinds of var­i­ous les­son plans avail­able on the web for free it’s easy to find a new sci­ence les­son plan to help your child excel in the sub­ject. For those who just want a new col­or­ing book for their kids then you can find many a col­or­ing page on the web as well.