I remember as a wee mumbles viewing parents with a kind of awe and complete lack of understanding. Were these giants like me? Would I one day also be a giant? How do they know so much about everything?
I think kids don’t really understand that parents are people or at least I certainly didn’t. They were this monolith of knowledge and confusing rules that had to be abided by and respected. Grandparents were even stranger and more awe-inspiring, an even more powerful giant that could tell our giants what to do.
That which divides us
As a child myself and my friends could all identify that adults were somehow fundamentally different from us. We were loud they were mostly quiet, we were fast they were mostly slow. They also worried about tomorrow when today was still happening a completely baffling scenario. So very much of being a kid is living in the tangible now likely because the concept of consequences is so foreign during this period while the brain is still developing.
Parents obviously have a relation to us, in the mechanical sense, not just the familial sense, but we cannot seem to make sense of what separates us from them. Faced with this unsolvable dilemma I think we store them in their own category and dictate what they are by what they do. Depending on your family situation you end up with a parent that could range from a psychotic monster to a selfless supporter and teacher. You will never know your parent could be any different than they are until you become old enough to visit other peoples houses and observe their version of parents.
A new Day Dawns
As we leave childhood and enter into our teens we are met with the shocking information that adults are just like us. This is such a surprise and so hard to process when the knowledge first strikes us because we had categorized adults and specifically parents as something else, something other, that wasn’t completely understood. This creates a need to readdress something that for the entirety of our lives up to that point was a stable and solid understanding (even if it was factually wrong).
Looking back into my childhood and remembering how I perceived parents I feel great sympathy for young children, they create an entire worldview around people that they can’t fully understand. When they come of age they are faced with the shattering of that worldview and have to rebuild their side of the relationship from this new and strange vantage point. I don’t think this is something most people look back and reflect upon but I think it’s invaluable to remember when dealing with children. Children quite literally aren’t able to understand you or your world and all we can do about it is learn how to teach them about us better.