22 April 1957

22 April 1957

My children are quite critical of their parents these days – as teenagers I guess it is the breakaway pattern from childhood. Just as leaves force through the hard shell into foliage, my children are pushing toward independent adulthood. Kurt and I are no longer the infallible ones. In fact, we are idols of childhood dependence to be challenged, criticized, and for the time to come discarded as imposters full of error, no redeeming qualities and of doubtless value – as outmoded as paper dolls or the oracles of the Greeks. It is a breakaway pattern into their own separate entity.

My, are we the impossible parents! So full of faults almost anyone has more sense and Kurt and I!

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If we never faced the challenges of life – instead attempt to run away from them and hope they will disappear – we become victims of the inevitability inability to accept challenges – to think ourselves through environmental handicaps.