DL writes:
“… tonight I was at church rehearsing with a trumpet quartet. I’m an average player, but the guys I play with are excellent. I also play a pretty decent piano, but of course I know many who are better – there is my inner critic working – it’s always been there throughout my life – no matter how good I’ve gotten at something. (I’m much better at recognizing it now).
I can pretty much handle these – but then I see one of the guy’s kids – a 2nd grader – playing the piano very well and a very bright kid. My son, in his 3rd year of piano, can’t play anywhere close. Where my mistaken thinking comes in is comparing my son to his son and to his life in general (you know – lawyer, talented, family seems perfect, etc……). But mostly to what I perceive as limitations of my kids. Griff – did you ever deal with that when your kids were young? I hope so much for them – but they are who they are and they have their limitations. Again, my inner critic comes in saying what could I do as a parent to make their lives better – or what haven’t I done?”
There’s a point at which my natural parental pride in my kids goes too far and becomes an ego thing. And that’s when there’s a mistaken idea lingering somewhere, that somehow, I’m deficient, and therefore my kids need to make up for it.
I remember this most clearly when my oldest son Collin tore his ACL on my trials motorcycle at age 13, just as he was starting to show some real talent in the sport. He never rode again. I’d often get little “ego orgasm” pangs of envy when my good buddy Jim would show up at events with his two sons. At some point, I let it go. He got into canoe racing and though I didn’t join him in that because of my sciatica, we stayed connected through his teen years till he left home.
In retrospect, I think the key was finding ways to be with one another in which we both ended up enjoying one another. Camping, bicycling, frisbee, board/card games, computers. The pure enjoyment of his company ended up being stronger than my desire to have an ego orgasm over his performance at something important to me.
It helped to know that my own father desperately wanted me to become a model Catholic, that he couldn’t enjoy being with me in my adulthood, that it not only got in our way of enjoying each other, but also prevented him from having any kind of decent relationship with his grandkids. I could understand how he got to that place, but I really wanted to avoid a similar fate.