Teacher don't teach me no nonsense
~ Fela Kuti
What! My foot, my tutor?
~ Shakespeare
When my daughter
was born, I thought I had to teach her everything. I remember the overwhelming sense of responsibility
that came with that belief, not to mention the overwhelming self-doubt. I hardly knew how to look after myself, how
was I going to teach someone else how to do it?
I soon realized that my daughter was not a
very cooperative student. I had no
control over when she would eat or sleep or get fussy. I had
no control over when I would eat or sleep or get fussy, let alone when the
lessons of life would begin. But that was
all right because it turned out she already knew everything she needed to know.
In fact, it turned out she was the one doing
the teaching, not me, and my humble job was to learn from her and adapt to
her. I was the student. That was way harder than being the teacher!
As parents wanting
to do right by our children, we think we have to teach them way more than we
have to. We think of them as empty vessels into which we have to pour our
wisdom, or as formless clay in need of shaping by our hands, delusions that can
persist long into our parenting career and distress our tender charge.
Unless we allow
ourselves to be humbled by our ignorance.
Rather than think
of your children as empty and amorphous, think of them as seeds that already have
the fruit built into them, and make it your job to find and cultivate the optimal
conditions for their fruition.
