Well, I'm experiencing the opposite feeling lately. I'm not looking to see if my kids are like me...I look to see how I can be more like them. As they've blossomed into young womanhood this summer, at 16.5 and 20, they've are the kind of people I only could ever wish or hope to be.
My older daughter is leaving for a semester abroad this coming weekend. She's just sort of fearlessly going about her planning, making a list of the countries she intends to hit, the places she will see, the things she will do. She doesn't know one other person in her program, will be building a new group of friends from scratch in another country nowhere near her home, an ocean separating her from everything she is used to. I don't know that I ever would have had the courage to do that at 20..maybe not even now, at 46.
My younger daughter worked this summer as a day camp counselor for the first time. She shepherded forty (yes, 40!) sixth graders through a busy day at drama camp, dealing with everything from everyday issues like girl sagas and boy problems and who got the best part in the camp show to meatier, thornier issues like kids with body image issues and emotional issues and family issues and a co counselor who quit midway through the summer. She handled it all not only with grace but with a sort of adult-like view that I wasn't even aware she had developed. I could never have been as she was, calm, cool, under so much pressure at that age -- and she LOVED it. She hopes to be asked back next year as a counselor again.
So how did this work out -- me getting the kids I never could imagine being but would love to have been, and me getting the joyous reward of watching them be this way? I don't know...but I'm sure glad I did.
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