We Wish Everything for Our Children: One Wish Tops Them All
I wish upon a star…
That my children’s future will be bright, that they will have…
Every year around this time, I reflect on the year that has passed and the one that is about to start. My thoughts always circle back to my kids and what I wish for them.
It’s a long list and grows longer the older they get (all young adults).
I usually start with the obvious:
Good job
Money
Home
Partner
Happiness
But then I start adding qualifiers to each item: a job that they like, a partner who they love and who loves them, a home near us so we can see them often.
I’m often literally looking at the stars (that we can actually see on our country road) while thinking about this. Just me and the night sky. It’s peaceful and quiet outside, especially on cold winter nights.
And I add more items to the list.
Safety
Resilience
Education
Health (How could I have forgotten that one in my initial list???)
Independence
Success
Confidence
I take a deep breath; did I cover all of them? Can I relax now?
And as though I have a personal fairy godmother who will grant my three wishes, my heart filled with hope, and worry—the dark side of wishes.
Then I add a few more:
Friendships
Fulfillment
Making good choices
What if your fairy godmother could grant you three wishes for your kids?
Which three would you choose? What is most important? Can you narrow down the list? Deny them some things and gift them others?
Off the top of my head:
Financial stability
Health
Love
But what about happiness, safety, and resilience?
I don’t know about you, but at this point, I’m thinking my fairy godmother is too stingy and should be handing out wishes like they’re water bottles at a soccer game.
We want to give our kids everything.
But what if we could give them everything with one simple wish?
What Parents Wish FOR Their Kids
We want the best for our kids. Or at least our version of ‘the best.’ We envision a bright future for them and may have strong feelings about what that future looks like.
We might put a lot of weight on these external material markers of ‘success’ and go beyond wishing to planning—our kid’s education, their college and job goals, their material status, and goals.
We might also have more internal goals for our kids: their happiness, social success, love, and good health. And strong ideas about how to help them achieve these wishes/goals for them.
Key point—at what point do our wishes shift to goals? Do we see it happening or is that line forever hazy for us parents who are entrusted at our children’s inception, with their wellbeing?
Wishes and Worries—two sides of the same coin
The night air is cold, the constellations above beautiful. What wishes will my fairy godmother grant to my kids? My wishes border on and slide, crashing full force into, the other side—WORRY.
Since the moment each of my kids was barely more than an idea, a collection of cells and a swelling bubble of joy threatening to burst out of my heart, I’ve been entrusted to keep them safe, educate them, and keep them healthy, and happy.
They are adults now. They made it. They are all healthy, happy, fully functional adults. They are capable.
I’m not and never was, a helicopter parent. My kids ran around in the woods, climbed trees, and scraped their knees literally and figuratively.
But I am still wishing for them. Each wish I hold for them mirrors a worry. Will they be successful? Will they make ‘good choices,’ find love, be happy, stay safe?
The list hasn’t shrunk, if anything it’s grown.
My wishes/worries paralleled their childhood journeys.
The toddler stage:
I wish that they’ll be strong and walk and run and play. I worry they’ll fall and get hurt.
The preschool phase:
I wish that they’ll socialize and make friends with other little kids. I worry they’ll be bullied or not have friends.
The elementary school phase:
I hope they will do well in school and make friends. I worry they’ll hate school and be discouraged and won’t find friends.
The high school phase:
I wish that they’ll get into a good college, figure out a good career path, get good grades and good test scores, and have good friends and, and, and….
And I worry about every one of those things not working out well…
Does what we wish for our kids stop at age 18? After college? After they get their first job? Nope.
It’s our job as parents, right?
From day one, we hold our kids and catch them when they fall. As they grow, we step in and guide them.
Our goal? To make our wishes for them come true.
We often hold our worries tight, imagining that by worrying for them, we are doing right by them.
The Fair Godmother’s Dilemma—Can You Choose Only Three Wishes for Your Kids?
Three is never enough. No parent can narrow down their hopes and dreams for their kids. We want everything for them.
But what if there was only one thing we needed to wish for our kids and then could then thank our fairy godmother? She would thank us for not bothering with the extra two wishes, thereby lightening her load tremendously and we’d all take a deep breath and worry on behalf of our kids—a little bit less.
Essential Life Lessons When Wishing for Our Kids
(disclaimer: I’m still learning this lesson)
My grown kids and I talk frequently. When they tell me their problems, they only need me to listen. They don’t need me to solve anything.
They have their own wishes for themselves.
They want to make their own mistakes, pick themselves back up, learn from them, and keep going. They will be their mistakes and their lessons. They will be more meaningful because the learning, the wisdom—will be theirs.
They have dreams. They also have worries, adult worries. And they want the space to do both—wish and worry for themselves.
I let the cold night air seep into me, hugging myself to stay warm but loving the feeling of being blanketed by the night sky. The stars feel like they’re speaking to me.
They are telling me the one wish—the one most valuable wish I can hold for my kids. It’s the one—and the only one—that does not carry the dark side of worry with it.
Teaching our Kids ‘How to Fish’
When we stop worrying and wishing for our kids and instead teach them how to be resilient, independent, and self-reliant, we are ‘teaching them to fish.’
Like the saying, "give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach a person to fish and you feed them for a lifetime,” when we teach our kids to stand on their own, develop and follow their dreams, make their own mistakes and have the internal resources to pick themselves up again and keep going, we are empowering them.
We are not just granting them ‘a fish’ in the form of a wish come true—a good job, good college, success, whatever it may be—we are handing over the keys to them.
When we act as their mentors helping them develop all the tools—emotional, intellectual, and social—to dream their dreams, we are teaching them to fish.
Somewhere along the way, we’ve all had to learn how to fish. The better we get at it, the more resilient, kind, and empathetic we are.
The Singular Wish
I wish for my kids to know how to fish.
Encapsulated in this wish is:
wanting them to know they are loved, to be able to love,
to know they can learn, teach themselves, and teach others,
to know they can figure it out—whatever it is—and be there for others,
to know that they can face and adapt to and accept whatever life throws at them, and be there when life throws things at others too.
My singular wish: they have the inner resources to stand on their own.
We as parents, don’t need a fairy godmother to grant this wish. We can take steps every day, in each interaction to help our kids learn how to fish.
We can guide our kids and empower them at every turn to make better choices, and learn from the consequences of their choices, to celebrate small wins and help them build their own set of blocks so they can build their lives.
We make this wish come true—
every time we model the kindness, listening, curiosity, and motivation
every time we guide them and instead of solving everything for them, bubble wrapping them, or demanding they do it our way.
We spend their childhoods granting this wish so that they have a foundation to dream and live, their own dreams.
The stars are bright lights shining out across the sky. I’m inspired to set my burden of wish-worries down.
Our kids—they’ve got this. As parents—we’ve got this. We can do this for our kids. Empower them with the ability to make their own wishes.