Learning from your kids

Friday, December 12th, 2008

You have kids and if you are lucky, they pass through the adolescent phase of thinking you are stupid (or even hating you) and move on to become really nice, warm and loving adults. I think I have got there now, well, they have become parental and protecting. Isn't that wonderful when you get that from someone you have beaten, shouted at, cajoled, hugged, kissed and berated?

But as life goes by, role reversal steps in. It started for me very early on with Caroline. I always wanted my kids to be able to swim from a very early age. I couldn't and I had a little friend who drowned in the river on Good Friday, 1953. So she and Peter learned to swim like fish when very young. Peter had strength and swam fast: Caroline had grace and truly swam with all the ease of a fish.

But Caroline moaned at me to learn so I did. I shall never be as good as either of them but I know how to survive now.

And so it has evolved, each of them imparting to me things I never knew of and imparting it gently and without judgement. I think in some ways they, on the one hand, regard me as the fount of all knowledge but, on the other hand, they recognise my weaknesses and they correct me gently. You have to love them for that.