Modern Love: Another Taoist Parent

     I have blogged before on Taoist parenting and I have found a new example.  Although she may not intend to be, Suzanna Paola, writing today's NYT "Modern Love" column, comes pretty close to being a Taoist parent.

    Her essay reflects upon her adopted eight-year-old son's decision to change his name. It is a bit mystifying and she wonders whether we can ever really know our children.  Indeed, from the very outset, she reveals a Taoist sensibility in recognizing our inability to influence the unfolding of Way:

But I suppose the arrival of children should clue us in that we must abandon any sense of certainty about how things will unfold.

     This was not my own first impulse.  I thought that, when Aidan was born, I knew exactly what I was doing and, within certain limits, precisely where we were going.  I had to learn - Aidan had to teach me - how wrong that impulse was, and how right Paola's understanding is.

    But if we cannot shape the unfolding of Way - of our futures, our destinies - then what are we supposed to do with children, who obviously need guidance and assistance in apprehending the world around them and finding their places in it?  A Taoist parent does not completely let go of his or her child.  Oviously, there is much that must be done.  What might distinguish Taoist parenting, however, is the recognition of certain limits.  There is only so much you can do - and sometimes perhaps you should do less - when it comes to influencing your child's life.  This recognition of limits comes through in Paola's appreciation of what she cannot know, and thus what she cannot do:

I suppose I’ve come around to the beginning, to the anxious and delicious waiting and who-is-this-going-to-be? We know these children in the way we know the heavens, basing our knowledge on the lights that arrive in our orbit possibly already extinguished at the source.

Like a star’s light, the flickerings of a child’s mind may well be gone by the time they reach our understanding. We fumble with our faulty equipment to find that they love dragons as they discover Bionicles and robots. We remember their care for animals as they suddenly become, like a niece of ours, a poet. We besiege their fort with our questions, little harmless arrows breaking against the portcullis. I find myself doing it.

   Children are not now what they will become.  Way is dynamic and fluid and we, all of us tossed by the shifting currents of Way, cannot know our circumstances of the next moment.  Perhaps we cannot even see what we are right now.  Instead of assuming static consistency over time, we have to embrace the inevitability of personal change.  Instead of attempting to impose a preconceived notion of a "good childhood" or a "bright future" on our children, we need to step back and take time to see them as they are in this moment.  It may not be what we thought this morning; it is almost certainly not what they will be a in year or two. 

    As parents, we want to think that we are leading them.  Taoism would tell us to follow.

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