Robert Persig’s son: “Dad, what do you want me to be when I grow up?”
Persig: “Honest”.
(From “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Mechanics”)
My own philosophy: Your children will grow up to be what you are – not what you pretend or profess to be. (They can tell the difference, you can’t fool them.) Be the person you want your kids to be.
Ugh, I dread this too. My daughter is very close with my mom. My mom is in great health, but it’s inevitable that people get older.
Oh, this. Lily adores her Papa, and Papa isn’t in very good health, and I dread the day that she has to learn that people die, too… (We had one dog who died when Lily was about 2.5, and Mojo died last summer - shortly after Lily turned three. She still asks me about them an average of once per month. It’s always a long discussion about how they got sick and died because we couldn’t help them get better, and it’s always heartbreaking, but I try to answer her questions as well as I can.)
My boy is 21, but he had a massive stroke 4 years ago, and I worry that he will never be able to live independently. I am hopeful he will, but I just don’t know.
When he was little I worried that he would get hit by a car, and when he was a teen I worried that he would be killed in a car accident. That is statistically the most likely way he could have died. I never worried about him having a stroke.
I don’t want to go into specifics, but Skald just privately told me something that changes my whole perspective on this topic.
Let’s just say that, had I known, I never would have been so smug and dismissive in my posts.
I owe Skald a major apology.
It’s all right. What I mentioned isn’t a secret on the boards; I used to talk about it all the time when I got depressed. I just didn’t want to start the thread with a huge downer.
Thank you for your apology. We’re square.
I’m not looking forward to pretending to get along with schoolteachers I don’t find particularly bright, but that’s at least a few years away. Hopefully never.
Not a parent, but with my brothers and in the couple of years I was de facto in charge of the household, I worried about whether the correct number of socks had made its way into the laundry, knew that Edu was going to have lousy grades then OK then lousy then OK (it wasn’t a worry per se… he’s one of those people who leave everything to the last minute and then wail at the consequences) and worried that some day I wouldn’t be able to bring him out of one of his post-grades funks, tried to keep meals varied (I wasn’t going to be counting vitamin letters, so long as we got different stuff I figured we were ok)…
Now I worry that Edu’s marriage is pretty shitty in many ways (yet they’re perfect for each other in others, but still…) and that Jay’s current Big Fluffy Cloud of Pink Happiness could come crashing at some point. I’m ok with it landing peacefully, just don’t want it to crash, and I’ve known his gf since forever and she’s not the blow things up kind, but still, worry isn’t always logical.
With my nephew, the closest I come to getting worried is knowing that there will be people who try to take advantage of him. It’s the same people who do it with me, the same family trait which makes little old ladies and lost children ask us for help makes wannabe predators think we’re prey; occasionally it works, more often it doesn’t. With his siter, I worried for a while that she would be one of the predators but I don’t think she will, she’s manipulative but not particularly nasty (that is, not any nastier than the average child her age); since her parents and Grandma #1 are all manipulable that used to be her default but she’s already figured out that with most people it’s better to be straightforward.
Very realistic worry. That sucks. I try to content myself with attacking the newsletters sent home with a red pen, rather than the teacher herself.
See also: making small talk with parents at drop-off/pick-up. Good lord, the world is full of inane shallow people I hate, and they’re all in my daughter’s schoolyard.
I worry that my sons (14 and 16) will have the lack of social skills and confidence that kept me from dating in high school, college, and beyond. My hope is that if they don’t date it will be by choice.
I am no longer a parent of a small child, but I have friends and relatives who are, and I worry about their children.
The thing I worry most about is whether their children will become enablers, or victims, or resistors , or conductors of the emerging tyranny.