But Do We Delight in Our Kids?
We are often proud of our kids, love them, worry and fret over them. But do we delight in them? This delight creates potent and sometimes lifelong shifts in our relationships with the young people in our lives and in the young people’s sense of belonging. I still maintain that parents are the best therapists for their teenagers but only when the parents are able to emotionally regulate in the face of teenager-hood. And that’s hard. Enter the village, those of us who provide invaluable services to adolescents.
I didn’t delight in my sons when they were teenagers. Well, I did some of the time. But not like I did when they were infants and toddlers and awkward 7-year-olds. Mostly I stressed and was worried about them when they entered their teens, so I couldn’t delight in them. I was confused, annoyed, had high hopes and even higher expectations, and so would be disappointed in them. I loved them fiercely, but I didn’t delight in them much of the time. Not nearly enough. And they felt that in big and lasting ways.
I’ve often looked back with intense regret, knowing that I missed out on something precious and important by not delighting in my sons’ teen years. I’m grateful for those adults who were present in my kids’ lives who delighted in them—their grandparents, aunts and uncles, the next-door neighbors, teachers, coaches, school counselors, and others. These were the people who would tell me all the good things about my sons, things I knew to be true but fear and agendas kept me from celebrating.
It’s a cliché I know but it’s true — It takes a village to raise a child. I was able to be with my students differently for a wide variety of reasons. I delighted in all of the students I had over the years. We had fun. The same is true for my adolescent clients. I was and am part of the village, and the village is incredibly important for teenagers and their parents.
What is delight?
The word delight shares its roots with delicious, delectable, and delicate. At its root, delight means to lure away, to entice. There is then the implication of surrendering to the charm of the person or thing when there is delight. Do we delight in our teenagers? Are we able to surrender to what fascinates and beguiles us when we’re with our kids? Do we:
stay compassionately curious?
set aside our fears for them in that moment and just be with them?
stay in the present moment rather than future tripping?
listen for their humor, their strengths, their gifts?
let our Inner Adolescent parts come forward and join with them for a little while?
check our perspectives and judgements and see these kids simply as human beings doing their best?
let our humor come to the forefront? or our sadness? anger? so we can join with them temporarily?
What does it look like and sound like when we delight in our kids?
We have rich conversations with them.
We listen into, that is, stay focused, intentional, and not wait to jump in with our own agenda.
We ask questions to understand their experience, not to correct or fix or rescue.
We stay quiet when needed. We simply be present with them.
We stay authentic.
We share our wisdom as elders by telling our stories, not by giving them advice.
We laugh with them.
We praise them, name what we like and admire about them, and, if it’s appropriate, we tell them we like or love them. Often.
What gets in the way of delighting in our kids?
Teenagers need us to be the adults. They need their parents to parent them, teachers to teach them, and so on. But they have a need equally as strong for us to be human, flawed, vulnerable, and authentic. When we show up one-dimensionally in the role we are in as if it’s all of who we are, then large swathes of who we are remain hidden. Kids feel this.
As adolescent service providers and other important adult members of the village, we have responsibilities and obligations to our teenagers. Our positions must not suffer for the sake of relationship and delight. However, relationship and delight must not suffer for the sake of our jobs. If our agendas are always taking priority then we are not showing up fully.
Our parts are going to get in the way as well. This is normal, and it just requires us to check in with what’s going on inside of us and critically question assumptions and long-held beliefs. Looking back, the parts that were operating in me during the majority of my sons’ childhoods came from: my childhood traumas; how I was parented as a child; assumptions I made about how kids were supposed to be and act; ignorance of what was and wasn’t normal adolescent development; and the certainty that how my children presented themselves was a direct reflection of my success or failure as a mother. While I worried all the time about whether I was a good enough mom, I was unaware of the parts of me that kept me from showing up to my kids with delight and validation.
These parts of us that work so hard to protect us from feeling the pain of unresolved trauma and shame, the feeling of not being good enough, also keep us from softening and letting ourselves surrender to the present moment with our kids. They keep us from connecting, often make compassion unavailable, and harden tenderness and hearts. The good intention of these parts work hard to maintain some kind of stasis in our own internal systems but can have a terribly negative effect on the kids who need us to show up to them wholeheartedly.
In Conclusion
I know that my delight in my students made a difference for some of them. I was at a local restaurant recently when I looked up and standing beside my seat was a man about my son’s age who was my student about 25 years ago. He was a young adolescent when he was in my class, full of creative energy, struggled with the academics, would rather have played and make us all laugh than settle into the work. I loved him then, have loved him all these years, and love him still. We chatted briefly, he’s a dad now, doing the daily grind. Before we parted ways, he took my hand, held it gently, and said, “Thank you. Still thank you after all this time.” And even though we have only crossed paths a handful of times over this last quarter of a century, he said, “You were one of the most important people in my life when I was a kid.” We hugged and said, “I love you” to each other and went back into our lives. My heart was full. I hope his was too.
I’m able to be with my sons differently now, and I delight in them as men. I hope that every now and again they run into those folks from their adolescence and remind them that they were seen and delighted in.
Photo by: Valerii Honcharuk