Tag Archives: Trust

A guest post from Dr. Birute Regine, author of “Iron Butterflies: Women Transforming Themselves and the World”

For weeks, Rene had been badgering her parents to let her have a gmail account. All her friends in middle school had email accounts, so why couldn’t she? Every time she asked she got the same answer. “Maybe later, maybe later.”

“We weren’t sure if she was responsible enough to venture out in the social media world,” Rene’s mom Linda told me. “I feel like I have to be the gatekeeper. I need to protect her from the horrible things in our society that basically want to flood into her life.”

During school lunch Rene would complain to her friends about how annoying her parents were. “They keep stalling with me! I’ll never get on gmail.” Her friend Cheryl said, “I can help you set up an account. It’s easy. We’ll just give you a fake name.” “Really?” Rene replied. “That would be awesome!”

Rene felt a twinge of doubt, but set it aside, assuring herself that her parents wouldn’t be too mad

Another tragedy has hit the airwaves and the school hallways. Again the question is raised, “What do I tell my kids?” I addressed this question the best I could—who can ever answer this well?—in my blog, “Look for the Helpers” after Sandy Hook.

This time I want to look at a different angle—one that may hit home a bit more.

When a crisis happens, we naturally express and project our feelings, make assumptions about our children’s experience, and react or respond accordingly. The first question to consider is, “How do you feel in the wake of the Boston marathon bombings?”

Most parents want their children to grow up able to trust most people and trust the world they are growing into—with discernment and good judgment. It seems to be getting harder and harder to trust our world, so how do we teach our children to trust—or should we?

We want our children to reach their potential, to get the most out of their lives, to experience all they can for their fulfillment and satisfaction. We want them to have open

The more stories I hear from parents, the more I know that to trust our children’s capabilities and detours is the path to connected relationships and success. But to trust a child goes against our standards of good parenting. They have to trust us. It doesn’t go the other way.

Yet who are we to know what our children should do with their lives; who are we to know what they need in order to get there? Our job is to remove the obstacles in their way of reaching their potential and accept and support who they are so they will have a firm foundation on which to launch into their futures.

A parent in my group put trust to the test. Her son didn’t like to read. He figured out a loophole in the school’s point system for reading. If he performed poorly, he would be put in the achievement bracket that required fewer points to get by. “He basically was reading See Spot Run books,” his mother told us. Her husband, who does not read, was furious and