Hope, Expectation, and Disappointment

When parents have children, from day one there are implicit or maybe even explicit hopes for them.  Parents say, We want our child to grow up and be happy, and in our minds we often have a template, a blueprint for what “happy” means.  It is different for each parent, but the hopes generally exist.  Here are a few unconscious or conscious expectations:

• Do well in school (Get As and Bs preferably, but Ds are failing)
• Be a good person (Character, faith, conscience, family centric, stand up straight and puts a napkin across the lap)
• Go to college (Because that is how one becomes successful)
• Get a good job (White collar job preferably because, YOU know)
• Find someone to love (Normal, educated, employed, responsible, possibly specific gender, possibly specific race, possibly specific class, possibly specific religion)
• Be loved by someone (Normal, educated, employed, responsible, possibly specific gender, possibly specific race, possibly specific class, possibly specific religion)
• Create a family (2.5 children with mortgaged white picket fence–home attached)
• Be healthy (Have nothing go wrong with body or mind)
• Be happy (Look and sound happy because all the points above were achieved)

Children put a kink in those expectations and from the beginning parents start to fear, fear for their own hopes for their children. Here is a word to the wise: support the child you see in front of you, rather than the one you have in your mind.  Attachment challenged or not, children have their own trajectories for their lives, which may be significantly different from the one you hold in your mind.

Love Matters,