The Myth of What’s Best
“I hope I made the right decision, Mom,” Anton says to me.
My parents thought it was a good idea to take pictures of our milestone moments. At the time, I may not have always agreed. Now, I’m grateful they did.
“You know there is no ‘right’ decision—just the best decision we can make in the moment.”
“Yeah. That stinks.”
“Agreed.”
I especially agree because the decisions are getting harder and more complicated as he gets older. When he was a kid, the decisions we were asking our boys to make were about behavior in the moment. “I hope you make a better decision about how to speak to me next time,” Jason and I would say, or “I’d like you to make a different decision about how you’re behaving right now.”
In those days, it felt like such a challenging conversation, and I suppose it was. It was about keeping my cool while they were melting down. It was about calmly trying to direct and teach them rather than just yelling what I was saying inside, which was usually something like “I’m so exhausted and stressed and YOU are the one having the temper tantrum!! I want to lie on the ground and kick and scream and cry, but I can’t, so why should you get to!”
Now the decisions we talk about are very different. Anton’s in college. Edward’s a junior in high school. We’re not talking about the same level of decisions, so after our conversation above via text, I try to offer up more advice to Anton in a Snapchat message, something along these lines:
“Just try to keep making reversible or changeable decisions. Remember as you get older you can always move. You can change jobs. You can get a new degree. You can change a lot of directions. Keep thinking that way because it makes the decisions slightly easier.”
Still, he admits he’d like a crystal ball. He wants to see how big decisions will play out.
And I think a part of him hopes that as parents we “know what’s best for him.”
But there’s a big difference between making the best decision we can in the moment and knowing what’s best.
I remember hearing my parents say to me “because I know what’s best for you!” when they would deliver a decision about what I could or could not do.
I probably said that to my kids sometimes when they were growing up. And in many of those instances, both when I was younger and when my kids were younger, those words were probably true.
When the six-year-old asks, “Why do I have to go to bed now?!” a fairly logical response from an exhausted caregiver is “because I know what’s best for you!” It might not make the child do what we want, but it’s probably true that what is best for the tired six-year-old who has school the next morning is to go to bed.
But then you get to more difficult decisions that kids make, like where to go to school, what to study, when to start dating, when to start going places alone, what jobs to consider, where to spend money. As parents, Jason and I regularly talked about the reality that while these moments might feel like decisions we were making with or for our kids, that’s the myth of “control” talking. Our children make these decisions and what we can do is influence and guide. Even if we “decided” what they were going to study in college, for example, they could change their major. If we “decided” when they were going to start to date, they could have found ways and times to have relationships we never knew about.
So Jason and I acknowledged our role, challenging each other with different questions.
Should we encourage that passion? Say anything about that friendship? Tell them how we hope they are thinking about their futures? Do we ask questions? Share stories? Give advice? Do we tell them we “know what’s best for them”?
It’s so tempting because deep down sometimes I think I do know.
But of course, I don’t. Yes, I have more life experience than they do. But I have life experience with my life, not theirs. I have lived expertise within my body, mind, era, family dynamic, social norms, and more. What happened in my life because of certain decisions I made won’t necessarily happen for them.
A part of me regrets if I ever said to them “because I know what’s best for you.” I don’t want them to believe that. I’d rather they believe that my life experience can help them, that my stories can give them food for thought, that my questions can help them explore possibilities, that my random advice can make them pause and look at a situation anew.
It’s also a little terrifying to realize that I don’t know what’s best for my kids. I wish I did. I love them with a depth and a fierceness that they can’t imagine. If I knew what was best for them—if I could see the future—I would always pick the right path, always direct their feet towards what would give them greatest joy, fulfillment, safety, and satisfaction.
Lately, I’m searching for the beauty in the reality that I don’t know what’s best for them. How exciting to know that they may choose a path that I would not choose and I will get to see the outcome. I will be there for them if they stumble, and I will celebrate with them when they succeed. With humility, I recognize that both will happen and would happen even if I could see what was best.
Other parents I know with newly adult children share my challenge and perspective. I’m grateful for the companionship along this journey as they too are trying to recognize the limits of their own knowledge about their kids’ futures.
My dad believed he knew what was best for me in some pretty big life decisions—what religion to practice, who to date—even when I was in my 30s. I know my own reluctance to push my perspective on my kids too hard is because I lived through his attempts to tell me what was best for me long after I think he should have realized he didn’t.
I get it. It’s pretty easy to just tell your child what you think is best. I find myself choosing words more carefully to avoid doing so. My dad did that sometimes too. And sometimes I mess up and let the arrogant belief that I can predict their future take hold.
My son Anton (age 2) with our good friend Katherine
On my best days, I remember a dear friend, Katherine, who taught me that better than telling someone what to do is to simply share our stories. And she never told me that directly—she just showed it to me.
She came to see me one day when I was a new-ish mom, struggling to give myself grace for all the ways in which my life wasn’t perfect like parenting magazine covers had shown me. She sat in our living room in the rocking chair she and other good friends had purchased for us. Her gentle rocking was calming me as much as it was soothing my son in her arms.
“Life is just chaotic and there’s baby stuff everywhere,” I was complaining. “I can’t keep up with it. I can’t keep organized. I’m not loving every minute of this like I thought I would…like I think I should…”
She smiled, rocked, and told me a story about a diaper disaster beyond all diaper disasters when she was a young mom.
What Katherine didn’t do then was say, “But now I know how quickly those days go and so the moral of the story is, what’s best for you is to just not worry about the mess and treasure the moments with your baby and not worry so much.” She didn’t say, “Someday you’ll understand that the mess will always be there” or “Someday you’ll miss the mess.”
Instead, she just sat in companionship with me, her story reminding me that all parents struggle with mess. This is life.
As Katherine did for me, I try now to be in companionship with my kids. I try to help them see that knowing what’s best for themselves or someone else is a myth. And I regularly try to remind myself that I don’t know what’s best for them. Instead, the best decision I can make in the moment is to listen to them, to share my stories and my journey. I can let them see that life is full of complicated decisions, difficult moments, great joys, and wonderful relationships.