It's not the child's responsibility to teach the parent who they are. It's the parent's responsibility to learn who the child is.
Interpretation
Parents should take the initiative to understand their children's identities instead of expecting children to guide them.
This quote emphasizes the crucial role of parents in the development and understanding of their children. It suggests that the responsibility lies with the parents to actively engage in learning about their child's personality, interests, and identity, rather than expecting the child to communicate or teach them about themselves.
In practice
In a parenting seminar discussing the importance of understanding children's behavior.
I get kind of, um, bored by all the sexuality and gender labels because I feel like that's where the problem comes in, when people feel that they need to have these particular identities. If you didn't have these labels, and you just acted on how you genuinely felt at any point, then you wouldn't have anything to contend with.
People write me every day. It feels like this cycle that keeps giving, because as far along as I get in my happiness and success, hearing other people's stories is a constant reminder of where I came from, where people are, and how much help everybody still needs.
It's important that when you do standup, you do small places like coffee shops and also big places like colleges. It helps you find the little nuances in your set that don't work, and you can shave off the excess.
When you first start out in stand-up and, probably, as any performer, you enjoy the attention so much, and even though that hasn't died down on stage, it certainly has satiated whatever was in me that was needing that much attention. When I'm off stage, it's not something that I really need.
Before I had a double mastectomy, I was already pretty flat-chested, and I made so many jokes over the years about how small my chest was that I started to think that maybe my boobs overheard me... and were just like, 'You know what? We're sick of this. Let's kill her.'
People have responded to my stories so well. They come up after a show and say things like, 'Your album really helped me,' or 'I have stage four cancer. I'm terminally ill.' Somebody told me it gave them the courage to die.
But kids don't stay with you if you do it right. It's the one job where, the better you are, the more surely you won't be needed in the long run.
I was ravenous for my child and took to gorging myself in the boneyard, hoping that she might possibly meet me halfway, or just beyond, one night, if only for an instant—step back into her own bare feet, onto the wet grass or fallen leaves or snowy ground of the living Enon, so that we could share just one last human word.
Children exist in the world as well as in the family. From the moment they are born, they depend on a host of other “grownups” — grandparents, neighbors, teachers, ministers, employers, political leaders, and untold others who touch their lives directly and indirectly.
You didn't have a choice about the parents you inherited, but you do have a choice about the kind of parent you will be.
My grandmothers are full of memories, smelling of soap and onions and wet clay, with veins rolling roughly over quick hands, they have many clean words to say, my grandmothers were strong.
There is no job more important than parenting. This I believe.
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