​THE TWO RULES OF CHILD-REARING

He didn’t tell me how to live; he lived and let me watch him do it. ​

 
Wisdom Wherever You Find It
 
He didn’t tell me how to live; he lived and let me watch him do it. 
 Clarence Budington Kelland
 
Advice on raising a child is easy to come by, but not when you need it.  Any wisdom I might have on the subject comes from the results, not the practice, and children themselves are maddeningly unique, frustrating the kind of mathematical precision that formulae for parenting seem to recommend.
 
But now that my kids are launched, I am in that position of evaluating how my wife and I did in imparting the values and practices we were intentional about. The answer is mixed.  Lest you misunderstand, we are enormously satisfied with the kinds of adults our children have become.  I could not ask for better offspring.  In fact, I admire them each, starting with the choices they made about life partners. 
 
But I have come to terms with the disappointment I felt that they did not follow the program I laid out in my imagination. However, here’s the fact: I was wrong to imagine them as anything other than they are. And I should have known better. After all, I did not follow the path my parents laid out in their imaginations. On some level, I know they were disappointed (they certainly wanted me to be living near them in Chicago).  On another level, they were pleasantly surprised (I had early declared my refusal to consider studying to be a rabbi). On every level, their love for me was greater than their intentions for me.
 
I would like to think that if I had turned out to be a reprobate, their love would have persisted, but I have known a lot of people who have dealt with awful behavior in their families (themselves, their parents, and/or their kids) whose devotion to each other has remained intact. I have also known a few who have never managed to rise above their expectations for others. That’s tragic, in my opinion.
 
Our children turned out great. And by observing them, I can see which of our values they embraced, which they modified, and which they rejected.  In turn, I can see which of my values I represented well enough and positively enough.  They were not always the ones I tried to articulate.
 
Not so many years ago, I received a Father’s Day card from the three of them that had this quotation from Clarence Budington Kelland on the front.  It landed in my collection of cards I have saved for a long time.  It may be my favorite (from them) because it liberated me from being a pedagogue and affirmed me as a parent.  Long after my day-to-day responsibilities as responsible party had ended, I learned this as the first rule of child-rearing.
 
The other rule came to me earlier, but not early enough. We were determined to provide our kids with a Jewish day school education and did so for each of them through sixth grade. But when it came time to choose a middle school and high school, it was clear that the talents and needs of one of our kids would be better addressed in the public school system. Doing what was right for our child was more important than doing what we had decided was in our child’s best interests. It is a fine distinction, but an important one. The better answer begins with the talents and needs of the child. The other answer begins with the values and presumptions of the parents.
 
My wife and I each had loving and devoted parents.  When they raised us, they had the examples of their own parents and no practical experience on which to base their parenting styles. We were in the same boat, and I am sure we made plenty of decisions in imitation of our parents and plenty in reaction to our parents. It is no different for anyone who first beholds that hungry, bawling, loving bundle of effluence and delight and, if so blessed, the subsequent versions who always manage to be totally different than the one before. Given all of the possible variables, and my complete lack of background in medicine or psychology, I am reluctant to offer anything more specific than two things I wish I knew when I needed them more.
 
The first: live your best life in full view of your kids.
 
The second: do what is right for your child.
 
The rest is commentary. Also, carpools.