When my daughter was six months old, I would hold up two outfits and let her choose.
Six months old. Already being asked to make fashion decisions.
I have always wanted her to have her own opinions. Which is a lovely thing to say until you remember that means your opinion is no longer the be-all and end-all.
And as much as I like to pretend mine is, it feels so freaking great knowing it isn’t.
She is going to graduate from college soon, and I don’t even know what to do with that.
And now I get to know her as an adult.
That is the part I keep coming back to. She has opinions. Her own opinions. I didn’t just make a carbon copy of myself, and I love that.
The thing I love is that she gets to be her own person.
Not that she agrees with everything I say. Not that she wants exactly what I want.
She gets to decide what she wants her life to look like.
I catch myself thinking about how we’re going to figure out what comes next. But that’s not really the question, is it?
This is her decision. Completely.
My job is to be supportive of what she wants and help her achieve her dream. I don’t need to turn her decision into ours just because I care so much about what happens.
They say one of the greatest things you can do is raise kids who think for themselves.
I have no idea who “they” is. Maybe that’s just what I decided I needed to do. You know?
But I was holding up two outfits in front of a six-month-old baby, asking her to choose.
I wanted her to have her own opinions.
Now I get to listen to them.
