Second Childhood

It was once the rage, not so much now in this indulgent 21st century, to practice something called ‘tough love’. This trite phrase has fallen out of favor for one because… well, it’s trite, and secondly because nobody seems to want to actually do it. Increasingly it seems that we just give our children anything they ask for because we want them to just shut up and go away. The act of parenting has been reduced to that of a Walmart stock person filling up the shelves of junior’s room with any and every gewgaw, bauble, trinket and gadget that their little heart should so temporarily set itself upon. The parents that practice this mentality of parenting utterly fail to realize that the seemingly harsh act of saying, “no” is the best thing they can do with their children. It prepares them for the very real time in their adulthood when the world will look them straight in the eye and say, “NO!” with vastly greater emphasis and far less empathy. It is best that we teach our children the ways of the world now rather than letting them learn the lesson when the purulent Valkyrie of reality does it for us.

Recently I’ve been reminded that it is not only the children of youth who need this lesson but sometimes also those who have lived their lives and found themselves back in the simple-minded throes of a second childhood. As children, it is easy to look at our parents and say that they have earned the right of perpetual self-determination. While it is never an easy task to curtail the most precious freedom to run one’s own life, there comes a time for most older people when they’re a danger to themselves and others. Every day we see fragile senior citizens crouched behind the wheel of a car, barely able to see over the dash, unable to turn to see traffic or react quickly enough to avoid a collision. It is sometimes only by the tenuous thread of happenstance that they don’t cause serious harm to someone. How will you feel as a child if your parent comes to an unpleasant end or causes someone else’s because you respected far too long their expired right to direct their own lives?

Far too often we confuse love and respect for a parent with obedience. We’re trained to honor our fathers and mothers and to be obedient and respectful. To truly honor and love someone though does not mean to blindly follow their desires and wishes to the murky and uncertain endings to which they might lead. Just as they parented us in our youths, giving us what they thought was best rather than what we said we wanted, it is the duty of every child to guard over their aging parents with the same assiduous pursuit of what is in their best interest. Sometimes this will lead to conflict or even schism, but whatever the result, it is a far better one than that of a parent lost too soon because we failed to guide them safely though their final years as they so faithfully guided us through our first.