Most us from my own Wonder Years generation onward have subscribed to these ideas. And as a consequence, our children and, to a degree, our grandchildren, have become among the most self-absorbed, lonely, unhappy people in history . . . next to us, that is. We were among the least confident cohorts of parents in US history and now, our children are among the least resilient.
Unfortunately, our children are duplicating our mistakes, and I think it's time for us to direct them back to our own parents, the ones who told us, "Because I said so, that's why," and most important of all, the phrase we were so reluctant to use (at least, I was) --- "No."
With those principles came lessons we never knew we were learning. If we were lucky, as I was, we had parents who made mistakes and owned up to them and apologized for them, without diminishing their authority as our parents. We learned that we could suffer a little bit and not disappear, but instead, survive and even succeed. We learned enough about the idea that we were not the center of the universe, that we at least had a working knowledge of what that concept meant, even if we haven't done particularly well at acting as if we understood it.
Experts are beginning to agree with this idea. Dr. Brene Brown says it best in her "Parenting Manifesto," as featured in her blog and on Oprah's Super Soul Sunday:
The experts explain that being a "perfect" parent, does not mean hovering around your child, preventing all suffering and loss, as I once thought. Instead, it means showing our kids how to recover from the inevitable mistakes we will all make as human beings. There is no single time in life when we have a better opportunity to do this than during and after a divorce or separation.
