It’s tough to know what we’re really supposed to do as parents. Obviously we’re supposed to provide for them. Obviously we have to protect them. But what is the job? In the day-to-dayness of parenting, what is the job? Is it life skills? Is it providing food and shelter? Is it values? Is it setting them up for success?
There is a lovely new documentary short out about Bill Marsh, who teaches kids how to swim. It doesn’t seem like a big important job, but over the years he’s taught something like 5,000 kids how to swim (and not knowing how to swim is the #1 cause of accidental death for kids). He really sees swimming as a metaphor, the process of learning a challenging thing and becoming empowered in one’s life at an early age.
Anyway, there is a touching scene at the end of the film, where Bill is sitting with his daughter. “When I saw my daughter in the first moments that she was born, she looked around and it was like she said, ‘What is this?’” he says, mimicking that sort of bewildered, wide-eyed look that babies have when they come into the world for the first time. “And I realized,” he says choking up, “that that’s what being a parent is. It’s showing them what this is.”
By this, he means life. He means the world. He means this crazy, weird thing that is existence. And isn’t that what our job is? What this parenting thing is? Yes, we have a lot to do, but our most important task is helping them make sense of this world, helping equip them not just with the practical skills (like swimming) but more importantly, the ability to develop skills like that, and the confidence and resilience to know that they can.