Maturity - in and out

SculptorDad
Wed, 03 Aug 2016 15:20:38 +0000

@Center,

I have push push pushed my daughter until about 2~3 years ago, because I had believed that realizing her potential was my sacred duty as her homeschooling teacher/parent. Success, rich and fame would be nice, but honestly she was so young they weren’t an immediate goal.

I started to feel that my belief was silly a few years ago, and started to think more on her short term happiness as well as long term happiness because life is short and we will all be dead in the long term anyway.

I still hope that she will be rich enough to enjoy what the world offers. I wants her to live in relative comfort, own a home and be able to afford occasional cultural travels to European countries. But I fail to see how more money than that can bring more happiness with the price she would have to pay. At the moment she wants to try business/corporate world when grown up and I want her to be successful, so that she can have fulfilling feeling and enjoy the moment, not to become rich beyond what she needs.

It so happened that putting her into a community college had an effect of her being pushed beyond what I have imagined by grading system itself. Our decision for her going to a boarding school was to have more relaxed, fun and exploring teenage, which I believe now is equally important to being a happy and successful adult. Achieving less, being a kid and all that.

And for being famous, I now see that as completely useless in her being happy and therefore I don’t want it for her, although I used to see that as necessary when she was planning to become a professional sculptor so that she could afford her own profession.

My daughter’s academic/artistic talent and emotional maturity makes me a very lucky parent and I realize that always. I am not naive to believe that I would have taken the same philosophy in success if she was academically struggling and just living comfortably with moderately successful life would be a big challenge. Her talents used to allow me to push push push her, and now perhaps they allow me to be laid back because I am confident that she will be fine after all.

Being laid back means not pushing her. But I still enjoy being involved and using my life experience to help her in finding opportunities and such. For example, we discussed her next Summer plan and came up with several good ideas. 4 weeks Spanish immersion at Caxton college in Spain is on her top list at the moment.