A Lesson About Growing Up

A Lesson About Growing Up — The goal of parenting is to raise your kids to be independent adults–and the age of independence is 18–20. That this is not happening is terrifying. 

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I sus­pect I’m on about this one because I just turned 75 (!!!) and the world is a real­ly weird place. Much of that has to do with expec­ta­tions, and how the last few gen­er­a­tions were brought up.

I want to frame what I’m about to show you with this:

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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—they are sup­posed to be edu­cat­ing them to live in the world.
• Par­ents social­ize their chil­dren 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, making 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.

This was sim­ply the way it was. It was hard, and some­how the vast major­i­ty of us got jobs, cre­at­ed fam­i­lies and got on with it.

This is not what I see these days and hasn’t been for a while. I blame my gen­er­a­tion. Because of the above dra­ma, we decid­ed that the gen­er­a­tions after us would have it eas­i­er. Seemed almost altruistic.

But…

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Here’s What Really Happened

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

1. The Par­ents (age 70+)
2. The Mids (age 50ish) and
3. The Mids’-Kids (20–30)

The Mids are caught.

• They tried to be friends with their kids (The Mids’-Kids,) as opposed to par­ent­ing them.
• They claim to be baf­fled over the behav­ior choic­es of their now 20-somethings.
• They think their kids are basi­cal­ly clue­less and they expect to have to tell 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 40–50 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 ask my par­ents.” Or,
• “My mom nev­er makes me feel good about myself.”

I want to scream.

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The game is chilling. This failure to launch – to become independent of the generations that “bookend” you – leads to what you see all around.

One’s Par­ents, dur­ing one’s child­hood years, are con­sid­ered wise and all-know­ing. It’s because they are big and know more stuff than their kids do—they 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 one’s par­ents (mak­ing them ‘spe­cial’,) is hard wired from infancy/childhood, and it takes an effort from one side or the oth­er (or prefer­ably both), to ‘cut the apron strings.’

Because… you know… being an adult is hard… sob! …snif­fle!

With­out “adult­ing” hap­pen­ing, it’s only log­i­cal that each gen­er­a­tion will be less com­pe­tent than the for­mer – assum­ing no one takes the ini­tia­tive and breaks the pattern.

Here’s a little math game to show what happens.

Let’s give The Par­ents a ‘wis­dom score’ of 10. The Par­ents got this score before The Mids were born.

BTW, I picked the word ‘wis­dom’ to be short­hand for ‘life-expe­ri­ence and func­tion­al intelligence.’

The Par­ents look at their new­born kid and thinks, “Yikes! My Mid 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.)

In the past, as the Mid grew, they received increas­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty. When they failed, there were con­se­quences. When they suc­ceed­ed, they were reward­ed. Func­tion­al­ly, they were “10’s” as they reached adulthood.

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

At our mag­ic age of 19, The Mid is sup­posed to be a wise, ful­ly func­tion­ing adult, and thus grown up. They should have devel­oped suf­fi­cient­ly for their ‘wis­dom num­ber’ to reach 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 Mids, and/or The Mids con­tin­ue to mind-less-ly default to The Par­ents. (Or, some learn to manip­u­late the par­ents so that the “sup­port” con­tin­ues indefinitely.

• 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’ (read inter­fere with) 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.’ The daugh­ter agreed and apologised.

In all cas­es, the prob­lem is that The Mid has not accept­ed or claimed full-bore adult­hood. Why?

Part of it is a new 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 Mids them­selves have about their own lives.

One rea­son The Mids 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 their par­ent­ing of  The Mids, whom they still see as “A ‘6,’ and des­per­ate­ly in need of my wis­dom / influ­ence / money.”

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More Math

Then!… The Mids have their own kids– The Mids’-Kids. The Mids, remem­ber, think of them­selves as a ‘6’ (to make a joke, ‘6′ is the new ‘10’… hmm. We’re all going to hell in a hand­bas­ket …) and think their kids, The Mids’-Kids, are in need of their (dimin­ished) guidance.

So, they turn them into 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 60-year-olds.

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The solution

For the Mids: 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 include them… ask your­self: “Would I include them in my cir­cle if they weren’t my par­ents?”) 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 Midshit 19, and you’ve been cling­ing on by con­tin­u­ing to look for flaws to exploit in your Mids. You did this to feel supe­ri­or to some­one, and you want to con­tin­ue to run their lives.

(You like­ly came 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 to them 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 Mids 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?

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