Category: Uncategorized

“Crying what I do is me; for that I came.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins, “As Kingfishers Catch Fires”

Your child is very much like an acorn, which is the seed of the mighty oak tree.  While sharing common characteristics, each is utterly unique, destined to be who they are, eager to move into why they came.

Acorns become oaks, never birches or maples.  Under the right circumstances, they grow into their most magnificent selves.  Under trying circumstances, they do not grow into their ideal selves, though no matter what they will still grow toward the light.

Parents play the crucial roles of grounding cord and stabilizer, of nurturer and guardian, and most importantly, as mirror to reflect their child in the child’s highest light.  But social convention and a superficial definition of success often paralyzes us parents into believing that our real job is to ‘civilize’ children and so enchain them, and we sometimes work to turn them into other things that may seem more desirable to the culture.  Birches, after all, contain aspirin in their bark and thereby relieve human pain (doctors).  Sugar maples produce a delicious kind of sugar that makes people happy (entertainers).   It’s tempting to want these kinds of individuals in the family.

But chances are, your child is an oak, with a million different offerings, and on some level they want to run and scream weeeeeeeeeeeeee, reveling in themselves.  Pay careful attention to who your young oak truly is and don’t mess with perfection.

How can you nurture your little acorn today?

I heard a story on the radio yesterday about a grassroots group in San Francisco dedicated to community film-making.  Every week 10 films made by community members are publically viewed and voted upon by the audience.  Only five return for viewing the following week, so there is a lot of rejection built into this democratic parsing of people’s creative offerings.  I had the usual gut-level reaction of resistance to this notion, but one of the contestants interviewed for the piece patiently explained that all that rejection is actually good for him because the movie/TV business is all about rejection and it’s important to become immune to it.

He’s right and we all know it.  Anyone over the age of 40 knows that rejection is that hot flame that tempers the inner steel that enables robust participation in life’s scrum.   We all know people who are fragile and careful, who have been disoriented and frightened by being swirled around in the rejection eddies, and who have never recovered.  We also know so many who seem strong and centered, unruffled by life’s surprises, those who have learned how to handle rejection.

We parents are wired in a primal way to throw ourselves in front of the train in order to protect our children from danger.  We feel the inherent danger of rejection in the college admissions process and rush in to remove as much uncertainty as possible, thereby unconsciously defeating our child’s natural developmental need to thicken the skin, which is required for happiness on this scary planet.  Rejection as sun screen?

I urge you to reframe your view of rejection as annihilation and see it more as a necessary experience for every healthy human, as painful as birth itself, and the cutting of teeth through tender gums.   Our role is to witness our kids as they move through their rejections – large and small – and to remind them that life goes on regardless.  And that life is good.

Maybe it’s my age – I just had a birthday – but I’m thinking how absurd it is to expect all teenagers applying to college to have a well-developed passion for something.  College admissions officers speak this word a lot.  It’s imbedded in college sites.  Passion.  Passion.  What is that exactly and why do they keep talking about it?

There is a certain wildness to this concept of passion, an imbalance that fits well with teenage temperament (which is all imbalance after all), so you’d think this topic would be so easy for college applicants to articulate.  Except that it’s not.  It’s really not.

Because let’s face it.  On that great middle of the Bell curve, where most kids live, teenagers mostly have passion for just two things – food and sex.  They’re kids, like puppies growing into their paws.  Their brains are growing,  They aren’t finished yet.  Most have no idea what adults are talking about when they get asked the ‘P’ question, but they know they need to get some if they are to be admitted to most private colleges.   And so the stress begins…

And despite knowing that most kids are just kids and not members of The Master Race, admissions officers still keep expecting teenagers to have this thing called ‘passion’ and seem to rate it highly on college applications.

So what’s going on?

Let’s be honest.  For most adults, it’s way too scary to tell a stranger our deepest desires and share our deep emotional juice in the face of judgment.  Could you speak and write about your ‘passion’ in life?  Do you even have one?  Now tell that to a potential boss in a job interview when you really really want and need that job.   Feel the pressure to make something up to make a good impression?  This is how children get separated from themselves and lose their authenticity.  This is how it starts.

As the Warden said to Cool Hand Luke, what we have here is a failure to communicate.   Permit me to translate a bit because the issue is actually pretty simple.

Admissions officers are looking to select students who best match their school’s culture.  They want to take students who will be happy, eager learners open to the adventure of college, who will take bold intellectual risks while limiting the social ones.      They define passion as a desire to move more deeply into curiosity, to express delight in original expression.  Passion actually is focused intent coming from curiosity.

I stopped asking students about their passions long ago, after staring for the Nth time into blank, insecure eyes, and now I just ask “how do you like to spend your time when you aren’t studying and have control of your time?” or just plain, “what do you like to do?” This always elicits a good response because it’s normal for young humans to ‘like’ something.

So if the topic of passion is a topic of conversation in your house, you can reframe this for your child.  They don’t need to cure cancer to get admitted to college.  They don’t need to have received a Nobel Prize.  They just need to know that it’s OK for them to like things large or small.  They are fine just the way they are.  And there is a college out there that will love admitting them even if they just have likes and not burning passions.