If You Could Only Teach Your Kid One Thing, What Would That Be?
When I was a kid, my parents insisted I learn English above everything else. They saw it as a key to a much better life. At that time Poland was only just beginning to recover from a few decades of Soviet occupation. They didn’t have English in school, hardly anyone could speak decent English at all. The West and especially the United States seemed like a land of unbelievable opulence and infinite opportunities. My parents said that only English could open the door to this mythical world.
It’s incredible how much my parents nailed this guess. They couldn’t have predicted the Internet, remote work, or even Poland joining the European Union. But I took advantage of all of these opportunities, working remotely in the US long before it was cool. This wouldn’t be possible if I didn’t do the bulk of my reading, writing, learning, thinking, socializing, and even personal journaling in English. I did it because I knew it could give me access to new worlds, ideas, and completely different ways of thinking that I wouldn’t be able to encounter at home.
What would be my daughter’s equivalent of this? What’s one thing she should learn above everything else? I come back to this question all the time. I don’t need her to discover a key to a better life, I just don’t want hers to be worse than mine. Like Boomers in the US I’ve only experienced things always getting better, but unlike them I know I can’t take this for granted. Our kids can’t just simply do what my generation did. Their challenges are going to be very different from ours.
How can I possibly know what skills will be needed in another 30 years? The world seems much less predictable now than it was in the early 90s. Some of my friends say they don’t want any children because the future is doomed. I don’t think that’s the case, I do believe our kids can live rewarding lives full of love and joy, but it almost certainly won’t be an easy ride.
One of the moms I met at my daughter’s daycare told me she’s looking for a good kindergarten, because not all of them can prepare her little one for the entry exams at prestigious schools. Oh, the irony! I’ve had enough of both exam preparations and prestigious schools in my life, and I’m still trying to unlearn what they taught me. But I know I can only unlearn these things now because they did their job well. I wouldn’t be where I am now if I stayed in my hometown forever and went to the local college there. Maybe every parent tries to give their kids something they wish they themselves had.
Knowing how unpredictable everything is, I sometimes wonder if I should try to influence my daughter’s life at all. Wouldn’t she be better off choosing her own path by herself? But for better or worse she’s already fully dependent on me, and has very little say in who she’s going to spend her days with, what she’s going to do for the most of her time, what places she will visit, and even what she’s going to eat. With time she’ll hopefully take responsibility of more and more of these things, but so far my husband and I are completely in charge. Even when I hesitate to make a choice, it’s still a choice I am making.
So what kind of tools do I want to put in her backpack to prepare her for this great adventure of life? All I can think of right now is courage and emotional resilience. The courage to follow her dreams even when they make no sense to anyone else. To stand behind her decisions even when the people she holds dear disagree with them. To feel afraid of the big scary jump into the unknown - and then to do it anyway.
Resilience - so that she knows that feeling bad is not the end of the world, that some of the best things in life often await on the other side of it. The ability to see emotions as messengers carrying important information about what’s going on rather than something to be either chased or avoided at all costs. To let these emotions move and flow through the body, neither identifying with them nor pushing them away.
Both courage and resilience are the key to learning any other skill. But they can’t really be taught, at least not directly. All I can do is give my daughter more and more freedom to make her own decisions and deal with their consequences, even when they are painful or unpleasant. I can’t yet fully imagine how hard this must be, but I guess I’m going to need a lot of courage and resilience here myself.