Let’s not worry about our childrens’ tomorrows

We worry about what a child will become tomorrow, yet we forget that he is someone today.

Stacia Tauscher

Oh the infernal worry of parents.  My mother was a worrier.  She was almost constantly worried about me as a child.  Whether it was my lack of common sense, my unerring ability to lose things, my refusal to apply myself to my homework or my poor taste in friends, clothes and haircolour, my mother was always there, worrying on my behalf.

As a child I experienced it as a pressure.  As a teenager I experienced it with frustration.  By my twenties I considered it an insult.

And yet, I recently identified my version of this in relation to my own children.  I was worrying that they would be able to make friends; that the guitar I bought for Christmas wasn’t a step too far for my son.  You know the kind of thing.  I’m sure you’re familiar!

And in a flash I understood that I was therefore not trusting my children.  Just as I had complained when I was thirteen that my mother didn’t trust me.  And when I was 23.  And 33…

I made a decision there and then to trust my children.  To realise that in all my worry of how they will be tomorrow, or in a thousand tomorrow’s, I was forgetting that today, in this very moment they are ALREADY ok.  More than ok.

They are beautiful and happy and spirited and above all, they are themselves.  And the person they are today is who I am meant to be loving.  My son and daughter are already here.  They are ALREADY who they are meant to be.  All I need to do is trust them and love them and guide them.  I do not need to worry about them.

My worry doesn’t help.  As my mother’s daughter, I should know!