What I’ve Come to Know
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
These are some of the things I have come to understand over thirty years in parenting and education. I offer them not as answers, but as an invitation to look again.
Not a method, but a child to meet
There are many parenting approaches, each with principles to follow and tools to reach for. I've learned from some of them, and they have their place in the world of supporting children’s behaviour.
What I share isn't a method or an approach.
Presence can't be applied to a child like a technique. It lives in the relationship between you, and it was there long before any method was written.
We're told authoritative parenting is the answer, and you could easily hear me saying that presence is. But the moment presence becomes something to get right, it turns into one more standard from the outside to live up to, and it slips away. Presence isn't a goal. It's what's already here when we stop striving and begin to notice.
Presence never leaves us. What grows is how fully we can come to live it.
So this work isn't about tips and tricks. It's about finding a real and lasting relational presence within your family in a way that frees both them and you to move forward and be who you came here to be.
When we parent, two childhoods meet: the one our child is living and the one we once lived. Turning only inward can become a spiral with no outlet, but something opens when we turn towards each other. “When I listen to you, for you, I come to realise I am also listening to me.”
You came to us on purpose,
choosing, before you had words,
the very door you would knock on.
We thought we would teach you.
Instead we learn from each other,
you showing us the way back
to what we knew before we forgot.
You don't need us polished or certain.
You are watching for something simpler:
whether we dare to be ourselves.
And each time we do,
without announcing it,
you take it as permission
to do the same.