Some Thoughts on Growing Up

Dateline: July 26, 2000

This week, an article from J. Eric Harrington...

In looking back over the past 18 years as my son grew up, I find it interesting to think about the process of maturation. In looking over this process, I also can't help but relate it to the maturation of the human race as a whole and the role religion plays in it. It's very possible that this relationship is a valid one, with the development of an individual being a miniature version of what occurs for the whole species.

There is some support for this view in the world of psychology, but I haven't included details on the research in this article. Still, let's look at the experience I'm about to wrap up and see where it leads us.

When my son was a toddler, he looked up to my wife and me as the all-powerful, all-knowing sources of the necessities of his life. I expect that this sort of attitude is instinctive in any species that nurtures its young, a natural outgrowth of the process known as "imprinting." While he was growing up, I made every effort to live up to the trust he put in me, giving him all the training I could think of for handling life in this complex, heartless world - just as any loving parent ought to do.

One of the hard parts of this progression - for me, at least - was the fact that I got pretty comfortable with being viewed by my son as something like a god. For the first several years, most of what I said was accepted as immutable law.

I have to admit, being in a position of pretty much absolute power did have an effect on me, though of course that power was only over the life of one child - I think the corruption involved was minimal. Still, I tried to keep in mind that I had a goal to reach: helping my son become a man capable of handling life more or less on his own by the time he reached college-age.

With this goal in mind, I made efforts to help him learn how to think for himself. It wasn't an easy task, and there were many times when I failed to react to his choices in an ideal manner. I sometimes found myself condemning without thinking, being upset that my child would think or act independently and go against my wishes. Still, I managed to keep my reactions under control most of the time.

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