The Tree

V.
The Fourth reached out his eager hand,
    And felt about the knee.
"What most this wondrous beast is like
    Is mighty plain," quoth he;
"'T is clear enough the Elephant
    Is very like a tree!"

I don't think I mentioned that Yamaku is a boarding school. This of course has its advantages, as one of the things that the school is trying to give its students is a sense of autonomy. These students have an opportunity to learn how to take care of themselves and work through everyday tasks such as shopping, cooking, managing transportation from place to place, and so forth. I do wonder about a generally unspoken problem this presents. While yes, these kids are nearly adults, most of them are still technically children, and yet how much time do any of them get to spend with their parents?

Family is important. This seems like such an obvious statement, but at times you can wonder whether people really know this. Surely when you're very young, family is everything to you, but when most kids reach adolescence, there's a sense of wanting to distance themselves from family and make their lives their own. I'm sure that there is some way that this is part of human personality development that I don't really understand, but while it may be healthy for teenagers to rebel in some fashion, is it healthy for parents to simply give in and give up?

I don't know if it's common, but it's far from unheard of for parents to be the ones pushing their children away. You have to wonder what such people think being a parent is about. Is it about loving, teaching, and nurturing your child to be the best, most well-adjusted person they can be, or is it something entirely different? Some parents seem to see their children as something like rivals for their attention; children demand investment of a lot of personal time and self-sacrifice, and some parents can't seem to handle this, expecting their children to give back something in order to make them worthwhile. Some parents don't fully understand their children and their needs, and aren't willing to try whatever it takes to grow closer.

Perhaps worst of all, some parents simply aren't there. Some of them are gone because some tragic fate has taken them away, but there are many others who are gone from their child's life out of their own choice. Parents that simply don't want to deal with children probably wish they could find a way to get away from them, and if they have the money to do so, wouldn't sending their children to a boarding school be convenient?

I hate to assume; just because someone's child is in a boarding school doesn't mean that they are using it as a tool to not have to be a parent, but I do often wonder why it is that I almost never see parents visiting their children here. It's not like it's something you'd expect to see every day, but maybe it would be a fairly common occurrence on weekends? I don't know. I may be missing it happening since I'm usually busy working, but I've never even once seen a student bring a parent to see the library or have a cup of tea at the Shanghai. At least the latter seems like something that would have happened a handful of times throughout the school year.

I find it a shame that there are so many families that seem to have this sort of dysfunction of a near-complete disconnect between generations. There are a number of aspects to a healthy relationship between a parent and child that it must be very difficult to get by without. Of course we all understand the way that very young children need their parents for both physical and emotional nurture, but does the role of a parent ever really go away in a person's life? Parents act as role models, emotional supporters, and life mentors and they do so whether they want to or not, and whether they're good at it or not. A parent who is never around teaches their child that they can't depend on others. A parent who is abusive teaches their child unhealthy problem-solving.

Of course in many ways the worst thing about it is that someone who is the victim of dysfunctional parenting is going to be missing the one thing that they need to deal with those emotional problems. When someone has hurt you, betrayed you, or abandoned you, who would be most appropriate to turn to for comfort and support than your parents? But when it's your parents who have done those things...? Who is left to turn to? People turn to people around them to act as substitutes for the roles their parents left empty, but in looking for an emotional surrogate, too many end up turning to people who look and act just like their parents did, because that's what they know.

You know, maybe it's the understanding of how challenging a tightrope act it is to be a parent that makes so many of them want to opt out. But in the end, it's not optional.