"If I Could Take on All of Their Pain, I Would"
Parents, if they love their children at all, at least sometimes worry about what their offspring might say about them in some future therapy session. We strive to love them in a way that guides them to grow up to be strong, confident, thoughtful, and caring, even as we know that the degree to which they fall short of the ideal will inevitably be blamed, at least in part, on us. It doesn't seem fair, especially since we don't get graded on a curve. Sometimes even the most ghastly parents produce saints, while the most conscientious of us are doomed to watch our children struggle and even suffer. That's because there is more at play than parenting, as important as it is. There are so many other factors involved in how any of us "turn out," from genetic to environmental, that only the most abusive and neglectful of parents will ever really know exactly what role they've played in who their child grows up to be, and what an awful knowledge that would be.
The best of us try so hard to help them, to be with them, and to absorb as much of their pain as we can. Parents often say things like, "If could take on all of their pain, I would." It's part of what human love is. In turn, we hope to shelter them from as much pain as possible, and by no means do we want or expect them to absorb any of our pain. But they love us too, and they are human too, which means that they must take on some of our pain. We're wise to avoid laying the whole awful truth on them, of course, the time for that knowledge will come soon enough, but some of our pain will always get through and they will suck it up like sponges because this is part of what it means to love. Likewise, they CONTINUE READING: Teacher Tom: "If I Could Take on All of Their Pain, I Would"
