He's just a guest

This morning I met with Nelly, who is trying to improve her English, in a café in a place (pronounced "plahss") populated by small gift shops, generations-old merceries and tea salons. We spoke for the first hour in English, then for my sake, in French.

One of the many things we spoke of was her daughter's upcoming wedding and how a former next-door neighbour called her recently, not to congratulate her, but to ask how she would cope once her daugher moved out of the house. To this ex-neighbour, the wedding was more a cause of grief than of celebration.

"The woman has two grown-up children living at home, one of them is 28 years old," said my English student/French teacher, shaking her head. "We don't get along very well for several reasons, one of which being, she never learned Dolto."

Who? Who is Dolto and what did he say? It turns out Francoise Dolto was a (female) French psychoanalyst who specialised in children and changed the way doctors and the public alike regarded children. From what Nelly said, Dolto suggested at the time (1940s) that children should be treated by parents as guests. As GUESTS? As guests. Wow. That is revolutionary.

But maybe it isn't.

My mom would laugh. She is Japanese and learned her parenting from Confucian/Buddhist/Shintoist parents who expected their children to, for all intents and purposes, worship them. She comes from a country where people used to, and still do in some parts, have 3 generations in one household and hold ancestor worship rituals. I grew up with the feeling I owed her a terribly large amount of money for raising me. Maybe this would be common sense to her. "Of course you owe me," I can imagine her saying. "You were just a guest, after all."

It is a scary thing raising a kid. I can attest to that. Whatever I say and do, I know I'm having an impact on my son. It is a massive responsibility that occasionally gives me nightmares. But it's true that someday, he will leave. He will make his own home. He will (hopefully) have his own family. Is this "treat him like a guest" mentality more for my own protection when he leaves, or more for his own protection, so that I don't guilt-trip him when he does? My mom seems to have gotten it right on the one hand, but on the other, maybe didn't do so well, because the guilt-trip lasted such a loooong time. Or, if one gets it perfectly right, will it allow one's child to become more his own person, somehow?

More food for thought.

Sorry folks, but I have half-baked this blog entry and hope to return to Dolto later...