Changes

This month is a month of two very important changes for me. My eldest son, Noah, will be starting college in just a eight days and my middle son, Jacob, will return to Germany in two days to begin the last segment of high-school (Oberstufe) there. He will graduate in 2016 and then . . ., well, who knows what  might happen then.

People have asked me and I have asked myself "how do you feel about these changes, Martin?" I have to admit I still feel a bit surprised by even the question.  Is there something special going on here, something extraordinary that I'm missing? If there is, I am not really feeling it, I think.

I rationalize:

Noah's independence has been a long time coming. Throughout high-school he's become increasingly self-sufficient. Never during this time have I checked his school-work or pushed him to study, etc. He has been buying his own clothes, taking care of hair-cutting appointments and, increasingly, in the last two years, cooking for himself and, sometimes, a friend.  For a little over a year he's had his own car and while I continue to pay for insurance, registration and major repairs this car has been his responsibility and it has increased his ability to be independent.

Jacob is going back to Germany. This is his second of three years there and his presence there and absence here has become something I am used to. I mention it casually in conversations with others. His happiness there makes me happy and sometimes even exuberant.  While Jacob lives with his grandparents, my parents, meaning with fewer chances to be independent like his older brother, Jacob still aspires to being independent in just the same way.

It occurs to me that my children's independence makes me happy beyond measure; that it might be something that I have intended and wanted, possibly since the moment they were born. I do not see it as  threat to our relationship with each other. Perhaps this is because conversation and dialoguing, rather than rules and obedience, have been such an essential part of how we have spent time together.  I suspect that many parents experience this time as so difficult because their children are moving away and out of their sphere of influence and responsibility.  More often than not this sphere of influence is made up of rules, chores, curfews, expectations, values, etc. My own experience is that the only viable and lasting sphere of influence between parents and their children is that of dialogue and conversation. This includes, when it's done right, a deep respect for the authority of the child as the dialogue partner of an adult.

"The authority of the child" . . . What I mean by that is that a child, at any age, has a full sense of him/herself as a complete self. The child may not always have the verbal means to express this, but he /she does have a sense of self, i.e., authority (authos Greek of "self") that, as adults, we should consider inviolable. For many adults this is much harder to comprehend and actualize than one would think. Knowingly or not we look down on children, we think of their emotions as unformed, their concerns and remarks as lacking in experience.  Many others confuse the idea of "respect for the authority of the child" with the idea that such respect demands the child always act responsibly (which, of course, means in a way the adult would condone).  We forget that being a complete self also includes not always following rules or doing what is expected or reasonable.

Yes, this way of thinking about our children is fraught with fear and anxiety for many parents. It could come from a culturally induced sense that when our children fail we're responsible, or a more narcissistic view that our children "should" act like we do. So, when our children move out and on into their own lives that fear for many parents turns into something close to panic. We simply don't see how they could survive without us. But they can and most of them will.

One of my favorite scenes from the tv-show The Simpsons is when Lisa's favorite teacher moves away. She is heart-broken and bids him farewell at the train-station. As he is leaving he gives her a tiny envelope or jar. When Lisa opens it after he's gone she finds in it a note with a single simple sentence written on it: "You are Lisa Simpson." What else could one say about authority, identity and self?

So, in that vein, want to say to my three sons (and especially to my two eldest sons):

You are Noah Srajek . . .

You are Jacob Srajek. . .

You are Gabriel Srajek . . .