One of the many things I admire about my two 30-something daughters is their strength. Did their dad and I role model that? Sure, their grandmothers too. It helped that they didn’t go to school and thus retained their self-esteem. I think what contributed most was our respect for and trust in them – trust that they’d learn what they needed, that their opinions mattered, that they knew what was best for themselves – knowing without a doubt that they were strong, capable people. 

Nurturing our children’s strength is a theme that runs through a number of the articles in this issue (and in most of the articles we publish in every issue.) Sandra Rakovac writes about how what we often think of as protection is actually taking away an individual’s power and, as such, is counterproductive to the development of confident, strong, capable personalities. Julie Persons shares how her young son learned to manage his own TV watching, in spite of the fear that he would “become a professional TV watcher.” Deborah Dyson is watching her life learning teens demonstrate strength of character as they become adults looking for new ways to interact as a family. 

Marion Cohen points out that the tyranny of wanting to do the right thing for our unschooled children can cause us to replace school-type “authorities” with a seemingly more benign homeschool-type…but authorities nonetheless. This authority can ignore children’s strengths and streamroll their autonomy. 

These parents have all learned to trust that when exposed to the wonders of the world, children will learn what they need to know. They know that when we try to turn their every experience into a “teaching moment,” we weaken them in many ways and turn our home into the very school we’re trying to improve upon. 

These are tricky lessons. We want to trust our children to grow, to learn and to thrive. However, the world can seem like a frightening place and bringing children into it is a massive responsibility. But what are we fearful of? The late Catholic author and philosopher Thomas Merton had this to say about fear and its effects: “At the root of all war is fear – not so much the fear that men (sic) have of one another as the fear they have of everything. It is not merely that they do not trust one another; they do not even trust themselves.” Perhaps learning to trust ourselves as parents will help us trust our children to develop their own strengths.