Garrison Keillor closes his “Prairie Home Companion” broadcasts by signing off from Lake Wobegon, where “all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.”
This tendency of parents to celebrate the positive is admirable, but it doesn’t tell the whole story of a family’s experience. Because for every child—no matter how lovely—the day will come when he disappoints his parents.
It starts in the nursery when two tots are playing and one cries out. Parents discover bite marks on one toddler, and the parents of the other gasp in horror that their sweet child could have been so hurtful.
In school, a beloved daughter may one day participate in the bullying of another child. A son who generally pleases his parents is discovered copying another boy’s homework assignment.
And teenagers provide their parents with plenty of opportunities to learn humility as they experiment with which rules to follow and which to bend.
Finally, kids grow up and leave home. Parents watch them struggle in jobs and relationships. They spend their money in ways their parents wish they wouldn’t. They fail to support some of the family’s time-honored values.
A man I know is a pacifist. His son is doing time in a penitentiary for a violent crime. Another happily married couple I know has a daughter on her third marriage.
Parents rarely say it out loud, but they may feel somewhat disappointed in their kids. We all want our children to enjoy success and satisfaction, but in fact, their lives will never measure up to our ideas of perfection.
But neither do ours.
Here’s the rub: We’re raising human beings whose own feet of clay will cause them to face challenges every day. They’ll disappoint us. Even Lillian Carter, the mother of former U.S President Jimmy Carter, once said, “Sometimes when I look at my children, I say to myself, ‘Lillian, you should have remained a virgin.’”
Accepting the disappointments dished out by our children may be one of the great challenges of parenthood. Ultimately, we choose to celebrate whatever successes they achieve or joys that come their way. And we find a way to make peace with those aspects of their lives that disappoint us most.
