A Beautiful Lesson: Mom, You Do You

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I’ll never forget the time my youngest son turned to me and said, “Mom, you do you.”

Do you have older kids? Teens? Adults? Were you a teen once? Are you laughing? I hope so, because these words are not cause for anger, concern, or self-shaming. They’re a celebration of sorts. Congratulations! I raised a son (two, in fact) who felt comfortable enough with me when he was a teenager to tell me this. Congratulations, even more so, because I was able to see at the time how much wisdom was in his words and how much of an opportunity it was for self-growth, or mother-growth.

I paused when he said that to me, and was caught in a momentary swirl of what do I do now? It was the first time either of my kids spoke up in such a way. We’ve had a very chill relationship all these years, are very close, and I’m not one to hover or overly advise. I do let them “do them,” but sometimes I worry and rush over to make sure they’re okay, safe, happy, and without a concern in the world — which might be an indication that I could do more of me and less of them.

For example, it took a little reminder from my son, maybe a year or two ago, when I suggested he pack some snacks in his backpack for the cross-country flight he was taking for work. I know you understand. What if he got to his gate as they were boarding, had forgotten to eat breakfast, had no snacks packed, and they had not one snack on the plane for some strange reason? You know where I’m going with this. He ran the risk of starving to death.

These are obvious dangers for a smart software engineer, living in the first world, flying out of a metropolitan airport with plenty of money in his pocket, and even more food-planning ability in his brain. Am I right?

He said, point blank, looking straight at me, “Mom. I’ll be fine.”

Parents and kids teach each other from the day the child is born. It’s a symbiotic relationship, believe it or not, like it or not. The parent is not the sole teacher in the relationship. The two teach, train, and mentor each other, depending on timing, situation, or need. Both need to learn to listen to the other. One of them — the younger — will, by evolutionary edict, quickly come to know their role as listener. Think food, shelter, love. While one of them — the elder — might have trouble with this concept. But if one day they figure it out, life becomes another level of amazing, another level of wise.

When the child is young, the parent teaches all kinds of things, while hopefully the child’s needs guide the parent on how to do so. There is no guarantee either of them will learn. When the child grows into an adult, the two learn from each other how to be in a parent-child relationship as two adults. When the parent grows old, the two learn from each other how to recalibrate this learning.

It’s never-ending, until one day it ends, and I don’t want to know about that. I’m trying to ignore that wicked fact while looking at it straight on, too. Oh, how I wish brushing things under the rug was a successful strategy in life.

I learned long ago that I could ask my kids to teach me things. At first, I intuited that if I asked them to give me a little lesson on something they were learning in school, I’d be opening an opportunity for them to teach, organize thoughts, and gain confidence in their ability to present their knowledge to another person. It was good for them and me. Over time, it became a real asset to me. They knew things I had no idea about. They could teach; I could learn.

This continues today, but of course it would. They know so much more than I do about many things, namely computer science, machine learning, and AI. One of the things I asked for on one recent birthday was a walk with one of my sons so he could give me a lengthy lesson on what machine learning was, to the extent that I could understand what he knew.

I’ve learned all kinds of factoids about nerves, muscle spasms, weightlifting, useful stretches, cooking and food prep, pickleball, the pros and cons of Crocs, classical versus quantum mechanics (for extreme dummies), guitar fingerpicking, autonomous vehicles, and endless tidbits about everything under the sun.

I don’t want this to end — that they teach me as much as I teach them. Though, do I still teach them? That’s a good question, and I hope the answer is “yes”, but how can I know? If I do teach, it’s probably mostly about how to be a person in the world, namely, how to accept the range of experience, bias, and knowledge among people. You learn this as you get older. You meet scads of people. You see countless situations, reactions, and personalities. Humanity is a complex system of a planet full of creatures swarming around with varying needs, power, and assumptions.

I hope I’m able to teach them that love wins in the end, even if you’ve lost, especially regarding love for yourself. I’m still learning this lesson, but keeping the journey out in the open is how I teach it, as is how I teach many things these days. Being a role model is an effective way to teach, and I figure this will be my main strategy going into old age. It’s often how I learn from people. It’s motivating and encouraging. I want to be like the person who seems gentle and wise, who seems thoughtful and considerate, who seems to have a broader mind than a narrower one. In whatever way I exhibit this for my kids (aka adults), I’ll be grateful I was able to do it. Both teacher and student benefit.

I say this often: you only get to be who you actually are — how you act, what you say, the choices you make, the thoughts you have — especially behind closed doors. You can only genuinely teach that, too. We’re all on a learning curve until our last day, after which, hopefully, our lessons will float around for a little while. This will certainly make it easier to leave my kids when that day comes, knowing I left them with the best lessons I could give. And you know what Lesson #1 is, don’t you?

No, it’s not packing snacks for a flight.

It’s love.

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Be well, friends. Have a nice rest of your week.