When my youngest son was born, I felt sure I would not have expectations of him that would be burdensome. It was one of my long-term parenting goals. When taking out an insurance policy for him not long after he was born, his father and I had words because I had said I didn’t mind if he went to university or not, or what career he decided upon, even if it was as a garbage truck driver as long as he was happy and healthy. Then when my oldest son came into my life at about the age of 5, actually as my second son (stepson) I felt the same about him too. I have no idea if this is the case, now that they have grown up, but I truly hope I didn’t (don’t) place too much pressure on them to be greater than they want to be.

In the movie J Edgar Hoover (yes, I know, I was on about that the other day, and although I’ve forgotten a lot of the detail of the movie, my notes are there for me to work from!), the burden placed on John Edgar by his mother, in her goal for him to be the greatest man alive, was enormous. For years he lived as a single man, with a male friend or companion, never marrying, always going home to Mother, and to her demands that he wear a better suit, or be a better man, or to hear things like it was his fault the child of the aviator Charles Lindbergh’s baby son was murdered, simply because he was head of the FBI at the time. The pressure that man must have endured, imposed by his mother wanting him to be great, to replace her late husband (or father, I can’t actually remember who) was definitely burdensome. As my boys were growing up, I felt some internal struggles about their achievements, about wanting them to be greater than perhaps they cared about.

In his Year 8 at school, one of my sons was working on an essay he was writing for the Headmasters prize. I asked him would he like me to read it or help him edit it. He said, no thanks, I’m okay with how it is (or words to that effect). I suggested he might like me to as it may help him win the Headmasters prize, to which he said no thanks, he didn’t care if he won it or not, as winning wasn’t everything to him. I felt moderately upset by this seemingly uncaring attitude to his academic work, which he easily sensed, and quickly came up to me and gave me a hug, gently chiding me by reminding me it was his life, not mine! My other son has I am sure, also felt some pressure especially by his father and biological mother to be more than he is, or different to who he is. They are both very competitive and work in the creative world, where winning prizes has been significant to them.

We all do our best, that is, the best to our ability at a particular time. If we look back, it is always easy to think we could have done something better, or differently. Every parent wants their child to be happy and to lead fulfilling and meaningful lives, but to what end should we pressure them to be great. My dear husband always used to say the greatest people are those whose parents gave them no choice, whose parents forced them into practising or studying harder than they wanted at the time, like many of  the famous sporting heroes. But does this greatness make them happy? There are times when I have wondered if I didn’t place enough pressure on my children during their schooling, if my desire to allow them to find their own way (within reason) was also stymieing. If I had been more forceful, would they be any different, or any happier than they are now? I guess I’ll never know, but I do hope my parenting style was grand enough, without being too aggressively in pursuit of my own dreams for them.

I’ve met many young people who talk of their experience as children and school students as one of pure hell, with so much pressure placed on them to be things they didn’t want to be, to get into university courses they were not interested in. It is of course, only their version of the  experience, but that is it, it is THEIR experience or recollection of events, and negative experiences can colour one’s world for a lifetime, especially if we don’t make a conscious choice not to allow it to. One thing I have learned is that we are on a journey not always of our making, one that sometimes seems to have been pre ordained, no matter what effort we might put in to make it otherwise. I have become a fatalist, but, also feel sure no matter what direction we think we are taking, based on our own decision-making or pure chance, we are really on a path that is not so much of our choosing, but based on the hard work we put in.