Our children are "other people"

It was the day I dropped off my teenage daughter for a disciplinary class that it hit me. Hard.

Our children are other people. You know, just like all the other “other people” we deal with all day.

After giving birth to them, we see our children as extensions of ourselves. We cuddle them, coo to them and nurse them. They have our noses, our spouse’s ears. They drop their “r”s the same way we did when we were little.

Don’t be fooled. Our children are not us. They’re not connected to us. They’re not our twins. They’re just other people that we happen to love as much as we love our own left feet.

They will go out into the world and do what “other people” do. Whatever the heck that may be.

We spend our lives in fear of the actions of “other people.” We hear about them on the news. Other people do so many things. They save trapped animals. They go to the park. They kill people. They cheat on their wives. They let us cut in front of them in traffic. We often feel at their mercy. They’re unpredictable. Unknown entities who make life stressful.

We watch and wait for them to do something that might affect us in some way. It’s the same with our children.

As “others”, they make their own decisions. As much as we guide, teach and set up strong boundaries based on discipline and love, we can’t control what they do. We can’t control them anymore than we can control any of the other “other people” we encounter each day.

Confused? Me, too.

Back to my teenage daughter. She’s sweet, beautiful, from a “good home” if I do say so myself. Taught the lessons of life. Disciplined so much in these past few years. Loved even more.

And yet, here I was driving her to a disciplinary class for a stupid decision she made that so many “other people” make. And I don’t understand her any more than I understand those other people.

Her decisions feel as foreign to me as does the idea of having an offspring whose age includes double digits.

So I sit in the car with my “other person” and wonder how to make her an extension of me again. How to meld and blend. Why can’t the bond always be like superglue? Why can’t we share one brain and one heart?

Or at least exist within the same universe of reason and responsibility? Why must she be so “otherly”? So otherworldly?

It’s with great helplessness that I realize my own limitations.

My “other” has choices in life. I can lay out the options, spell out the consequences and offer love and advice. Then, my “other” gets to choose between Option A, B or C. One thing I can’t do is make the choice for her.

Another thing I can’t do is accept the guilt for her choices. Because they’re hers. The choices of another.

So I send my other person out into the world to blend with the rest.

Maybe my best option is to introduce my other person to some other “other people” of quality. People who do the good things I hear about on the news.

Saving animals, etc.

Let those “others” have their influence. There may be no other possibility.