“Better to Bless Than to Brood”

Paraphrased from「用心牽繫，不一定要朝朝夕夕」

Chinese by Julie Liu, English translated by Mary L. Liu

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One Sunday afternoon, the radio show host was introducing an article called “Thank Goodness Roses Have Thorns.” This piece was written about 20 years ago by a famous Chinese author, Hsia Liu, who had to live with an illness for over 30 years. In her writing, Ms. Liu mentioned how once, while running a parent-child conference, the parents at the conference were anxious to know how Liu’s mother had helped her duringher long period of illness. Sitting behind her, Liu’ mother replied that the greatest way she helped was by not helping at all.

Such a response makes me appreciate Liu’s mother’s wisdom and courage. Her actions also remind me of the mother of Lena Maria, the physically-disabled Swedish author of “The Girl Who Used Her Feet to Fly.” Like Liu’s mother, Lena Maria’s mother made the choice of not sheltering her daughter from hardship so that the girl could learn to face challenges by herself and build character through adversity. Such a decision from a mother may be greatly misunderstood by an ill or disabled child initially, and while she was young, Ms. Liu did regard her mother as being neither warm nor compassionate. However, over the years, she gradually understood and appreciated the purpose behind her mother’s efforts.

We need to train our children as early as possible how to face difficulties and train them beyond their comfort zone. However, this does not equate to lack of parental care for children. Rather, such actions will give children a reasonable space to grow-up and develop their abilities, strengthen their ability to fight stress, and increase their self-confidence.

My friend, Sue, has a daughter, Lily. When she was six years old, the bilingual school that Lily had attended was planning an overseas trip to Canada. Lily signed up to join. She was a smart and capable girl, and under her parents care, had become very stable and mature for her age. Not only did her parents approve of letting their young daughter go, but her teachers agreed as well, and so she was set to go.

Before the group set off, the students met in front of the City Hall, and Lily was assigned to room with a junior high school girl. When the roommate’s mother found out about this, she protested vehemently, saying that her daughter was not going to be a babysitter. However, when they arrived in Canada, Lily only called home twice, once to report that she’d arrived safely and again to report that they were about to return home. She was happy the entire time, and things had gone well. Her roommate was a different story:

She cried very often during the entire trip, and it was Lily who had to comfort her. Even the roommate’s mother had to call repeatedly to calm her own anxiety about her daughter being so far away. She called so often and her daughter’s emotions were so unstable that it made things difficult with the home-stay family. Eventually, the mother felt too embarrassed to call and bother the home-stay family, so she asked Sue to call on her behalf. Sue refused to call, and the roommate’s mother could not believe that my friend could actually be calm and not worry at all.

Like Lily’s parents, we need to teach our children properly from the very start, giving them confidence and just enough freedom so that we won’t have any worries when they are no longer by our sides. As we see in Lily’s case, she was able to take care of herself without her parents around during her overseas trip, and her parents did not have to worry about her.

There is another story about a group of busy women who managed to find some time to get away. They took a two-day car trip down south. But shortly after they set off, almost everyone had worries and was busy calling their home on their cellular phones, making the atmosphere in the car very stressful. Finally, the leader of the group suggested that everyone turn off their cellular phones and be mentally and physically present for the duration of their trip. This would also allow their husbands and children to experience what it would be like to not have mommy at home. The ladies agreed, and the entire trip was positively memorable as the female travelers truly enjoyed themselves.

Later on, one of the mothers was thinking about the trip and commented how she was initially really worried that things would be very inconvenient for everyone when she wasn’t at home. Little did she know that her husband and children really enjoyed themselves while she was away. They didn’t eat the food she left them in the refrigerator but instead tried something different by getting take-out or eating out. Her son even asked her when she would be going down south again. His comment made her realize that she was the one who had trouble letting go; she wasn’t really as irreplaceable as she thought. She was surprised and relieved to find that her family was that adaptable, and that without her the world would keep turning.

From this, we can see that we have to learn that over-worrying accomplishes nothing. What’s more, we might even lose something. Like in the movie “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” the philosophy played out is one of having nothing in a tightly clenched hand versus one having everything desired if one’s hand is open. We do all we can for our children, hoping that everything will go well for them and that they will make something of themselves. In this long process, the expectations might be too high, and if there were failures, the confidence of the parents in the children would be lowered, and that could damage the relationship between them. In truth, the children may work hard and achieve good results, but these results are hard to judge if the parents are overly ambitious.

Therefore, in order to give our children a reasonable space in which to grow up, we should learn to be like the mothers of Ms. Liu and Lena Maria. We need to emphasize the truly important things of development and not be focused solely on academic success and stellar grades. That way, the pressure on our children will be decreased. The children may then show surprising aptitude as they explore new horizons and areas of growth, and the parent-child relationship may improve as well.

Good family relationships don’t have to be maintained by spending a lot of time together. What’s important is treasuring the time that you do have, giving children the proper kind of love when they’re growing up. We need to also teach them how to empathize and appreciate the efforts of others. And when they grow up and are independent, we as parents will not have to worry but instead can just quietly bless them in their endeavors.