Stories You're Told
Paul Buckley
The other day I drove by a house where a dad and his adult handicapped son were sitting. I reflexively thought to myself “Wow, that dad is a saint” - but then caught myself… Is he a saint? Why do I just assume that that dad is a good person? I don’t really have much data on their character so it led me to ponder why that was the narrative that immediately came to mind.
The conclusion I came to was that this is a story my dad would often tell. He’d talk glowingly about parents with handicapped children and how those parents should be “given medals”. He got to saw first-hand how difficult it can be and chose to voice that life view when we were around.
This is an important parenting lesson for me. It isn’t as if he specifically taught us to view people in that way, but threw off-hand mentions through the years it built up this narrative in my head as well. The stories we tell in front of our kids become the stories they believe regardless of if we’re intending to.
The successful person down the block, are they lucky or are they a hard worker? That homeless person, are they lazy or are they beaten down by the world? That fall off the bike, was it scary or brave? The way we create stories as parents is important and can shape kids in ways we don’t intend.