My kid wanted help with his legos the other day and I couldn’t do it in that moment.  It got me thinking about the times I’m not able to help as I want to.  The call of the things I want and need to do for my own sanity versus giving that up and spending time with him.  Believe me I know how quickly this time moves and how precious it is to spend the moments I have with my son, but I also know that those are the same moments I have for myself.  So it isn’t about ignoring his needs or leaving him alone, it isn’t even about honoring my needs—because my needs are to have fun and be with him and learn to explore my own options while helping him develop his skills.  I need to develop my skills in order to help him develop his…but it’s more about letting go.  I’d love to be there for every moment he has but it isn’t possible.  I started thinking that my role isn’t to help and do it all for him.  I need to allow him to struggle a bit so he learns to develop confidence in himself.  I need to back off and let him spend more time with my husband so my husband can see his abilities as a parent and that he is able to help around the house and that he has the capacity to do more than he thinks he can.  My role at this time, instead of thinking it’s selfish, may be to focus on my goals and dreams and my creative projects so I can bring that to life. 

In attending to my goals and working through whatever feelings, challenges, obstacles, straight pathways come up, I learn to navigate and coach and guide my family or whoever needs it.  My son may struggle with certain things, but me constantly rescuing him isn’t going to help him learn how to do it.  My husband suffers from thinking he will be trapped or that he is incapable of breaking habits and routines, but if I keep coming to his rescue, he will continue the same patterns he always has and we will continue to wind up in the same situations.  As a people pleaser and an aggressive problem solver, this goes against my very nature.  I’ve trained myself to hop in and make myself useful and give the answers whenever I can, never fully understanding the disservice I was giving people.  I just wanted to help and be seen as useful, to be liked.  I thought that by doing things for people I would automatically be included.  Life doesn’t work that way.  In the instance with my son, he truly needed me to step back so he could learn how to do it on his own.  With my husband, he really needed to learn how to take care of himself and trust his instincts, to trust that his efforts will pay off. 

I’m not meant to control anything except myself so in the grand scheme of things, I have no say in what my son does with his life.  But I am responsible for making sure he is able to figure it out, and yes, that means leaving him to his own devices at times.  I struggle because I know what it was like to try and figure things out when I had no clue what to do, what was next.  But with practice, that got easier and easier.  So much of life is about figuring it out, and for me it was figuring out that the right people will like me and that It’s not my responsibility to bear the burden of figuring it out for others.  There are certain things that, just because we CAN do them doesn’t mean we should do them.  We need to allow growth in all avenues and that sometimes means focusing solely on our own things.  We can’t always rely on others to nurture our growth, we need to cultivate and tend to ours as we develop our lives.  Sometimes when people don’t help us it isn’t because they are being selfish or cruel, it’s because they love us and we need to learn how to do things for ourselves.  We have to allow the same gift for others.  So, instead of immediately jumping in to solve a problem for others, ask if it’s really needed or if your support is needed.  We learn to trust that others will do their part in that way as well.  Through doing nothing, we find the way sometimes.