“I’m not a-skeered o’ you,” I declare to my offspring, even though she’s now almost 418 months old and he’s nearly 349.

Talk about whistling in the dark – they terrify me. My children are passionate, capable of expressing strong emotions including coldness and disapproval. When either gets that way I cringe inside. I wince and an edge of my heart sloughs off for a bit, leaving jagged awareness of vulnerability. “I’m not a-skeered o’ you,” I repeat, and it starts to be true. I’ve gotten used to the terror and can encapsulate it.

It appears I’m not alone. I once read of an exiting Berkeley High principal, who observed that our society cherishes its young but fears its teenagers. Really, she asserted, these kids are mostly doing what you’d want them to do, and better.

Maybe the condition was taught by our parents – I remember how crazed they became in the early 1960s. We got good at ignoring them, didn’t we? And then we made all those promises to our own babies, which were impossible to keep but which act as barbs now to trigger our guilt, which then creates hesitancy?

Parental love, I remember hearing once, is the only kind which, if properly executed, leads to separation. That’s it, you know. You have to keep the object in mind. Continue releasing the tether, but with eyes open and arms ready to pull back. Breathe through the fear. Get used to the disdain.

It’s a job and it’s important. It’s okay to forget yourself at times, but not the objective.

I had to question everything I’d seen
or heard about the way to parent well.
Instead I read my memory to glean
the elements of truth I told and tell.

I disagree with those who advocate
enriching kids with lessons after school,
distracting them from boredom, toting weight
for them, implying fairness is a rule.

What kids deserve are truth and empathy,
for they’re enduring challenges momentous,
difficult and strange: each has to be
(for 20 years) a human being apprentice.

The fact is if you want the best results,
instead of rearing children, raise adults.