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We gave her most of our lives
Sacrificed most of our lives
…Why would she treat us so thoughtlessly?
--The Beatles, "She’s Leaving Home"
Okay, I admit it. I was wrong. A couple of weeks ago I claimed it was a self-evident truth that U2 had surpassed The Beatles as the greatest musical group in history. Given the amount of vitriolic feedback I received, you would have thought I had promoted Hitler as the ideal ScreamFree Leader.
So to all of you, I admit it. I was wrong and you were right. The Beatles are the greatest group of all time.
And here’s how I came to my senses. First of all, my wife, Jenny, threatened to leave me unless I recanted. Anyone who’s seen her Fab-Four poster-laden high school classroom knows she’s a Beatles fanatic. I explained to her that such a threat wasn’t very indicative of a ScreamFree Marriage, and she then asked me if I would be interested in a SexFree Marriage. I told Jenny that such an arrangement would actually be her loss. She looked at me with that Jennifer Grey in "Ferris Bueller"-kind of "you’ve got to be joking" look.
Secondly, I remembered a relatively underplayed Beatles classic from their monumental Sgt. Pepper’s album. One of my points about U2 was the poignancy of their lyrics. But in "She’s Leaving Home," The Beatles demonstrated that in addition to their silly love songs and psychedelia, they could write some of the most truthful, touching lyrics ever composed.
Especially when they agree with me. ;)
The song tells the story of a young woman bravely deciding that it’s finally time to venture out on her own. That she has to do so by awaking earlier than her parents, and merely leaving them a good-bye note, tells us all we need to know about the nature of their relationship.
Wednesday morning at five o'clock, as the day begins
Silently closing her bedroom door
Leaving the note that she hoped would say more
She goes downstairs to the kitchen clutching her handkerchief
Quietly turning the backdoor key
Stepping outside…she is free
Some of you may be taking your kids off to college this month. Maybe some of you will be taking your kids to kindergarten for the first time. And you’ve probably been in planning mode for this departure, probably even looking forward to it. For the family in the song, however, this was not a planned launching of a daughter into her own life; this was a daughter’s desperate escape. "Escape from what?" we are led to ask. Was she being abused in some way? Continually exposed to drugs? Caught in the middle of a horrible divorce?
Nope. From the parent’s reaction we get the picture that this was, by all outside accounts, the ideal family. This was a couple completely devoted to their daughter, completely devoted to sacrificing their lives in order to provide one for her. Notice their reactions in the parentheses of the chorus:
She (We gave her most of our lives)
Is leaving (Sacrificed most of our lives)
Home (We gave her everything money could buy)
She's leaving home after living alone
For so many years (Bye bye)
From these few lines we begin to get the picture. This was a parenting duo struggling to follow the new parenting model that began to emerge in the 1950s. In a radical overreaction to the "kids are to be seen and not heard" model, parents in the 50s & 60s began to orbit their whole lives around their children, seeking to provide them the best life possible. And in the newfound wealth of the post-WWII West, these parents began to define "the best life possible" as one filled with material gain.
Never mind the inherent difficulties in making ourselves happy with possessions, all of us parents still fall into the folly of trying to buy our kids a new life. Just looking at our Christmas budget makes me want to go to confession. But we fail to realize that by pursuing this route, we are usually attempting to purchase more than our kids’ happiness. We’re also trying to buy their loyalty. Even at the cost of any true relationship that would prevent any of our children from feeling truly alone.
Father snores as his wife gets into her dressing gown
Picks up the letter that's lying there
Standing alone at the top of the stairs
She breaks down and cries to her husband "Daddy our baby's gone!
Why would she treat us so thoughtlessly?
How could she do this to me?"
There is so much information contained in these few lines. First of all, I’m always concerned when I hear couples referring to each other as "Momma" or "Daddy." So often we see this in cute older couples who cannot even remember when they stopped calling each other by their names. But what does it say about me when my wife ceases to call me "Hal" and only refers to me by my parental identity? Now that we’re parents, is that now the primary basis for our relationship? Unfortunately, for many, many couples, the answer is a resounding "yes." And if so, it makes perfect sense that seeing their "baby" leave home is so terrifying. If we don’t have our baby with us, then what do we do with ourselves? What’s my identity now? What’s the basis of our relationship now? How could she do this to me?
As if she owed it to them.
Whenever our children begin to exercise their own minds, and lead their own lives, we often take it personally. "You don’t want to play baseball this year? But we’ve worked so hard!" "How can you sit there and complain? You have so much more stuff than I ever did as a kid! You should feel grateful." "Your mother and I have decided that if you insist on seeing him, we cannot continue to pay for your college."
The irony is that until our kids show this kind of "disloyalty," we think of ourselves as purely selfless, never thinking of ourselves, but only of our children.
She (We never thought of ourselves)
Is leaving (Never a thought for ourselves)
Home (We struggled hard all our lives to get by)
She's leaving home after living alone
For so many years (Bye bye)
The greatest thing we can do for our kids is learn to focus on ourselves. That’s the first line of ScreamFree Parenting, and it is meant to directly confront the prevailing misconception about parenting. Namely, that in order to be great parents, we have to lose our lives in the process. And our kids will be better off for it. And they will (or should) be grateful.
By learning to focus on ourselves, however, for the benefit of our family, we take our gaze off of them and thus free them up to explore their own way. And we can actually be available to them, without needing them to be available to us.
Friday morning at nine o'clock she is far away
Waiting to keep the appointment she made
Meeting a man from the motor trade
Here we get a window here into the young woman’s bravery. Without her parents’ help, or even their knowledge, she has arranged for a job interview. Now selling cars is probably not her parents’ idea of a good job, but she’s doing it on her own. And it’s that individual spirit that will carry her further than any help from her parents (which would obviously have strings attached).
Remember when your three-year-old daughter dressed herself for the first time? You were a little nervous wondering what she was doing in her room for such a long time. And just when you were about to go up and check on her, she came bounding out with a totally mismatched outfit, putting together colors and patterns that would’ve been embarrassing even for a golfer in the 1970s.
And yet she was beaming.
She was beaming with pride because she was beginning to flap her wings; she was exercising her own free will, and it felt brilliant. And yet, you felt torn. You perhaps marveled at her burgeoning growth, but you couldn’t stand the idea of going out in public with a daughter dressed like a carpet swatch catalog. What would all the people think of you as a parent?
Somehow I don’t think either of the parents in this song would have felt torn at all. They would have forced the child to change into the new matching clothes they had just bought. And then wondered why their little girl didn’t want to wear them.
And that’s perhaps the worst tragedy of the “overloyal" families. The parents have no ability to focus on themselves because they have always lived for someone else. Since they are confident that this is the right thing to do, their entire focus is now on how well the kids respond.
She (What did we do that was wrong?)
Is having (We didn't know it was wrong)
Fun (Fun is the one thing that money can't buy)
Something inside that was always denied
For so many years (Bye bye)
For me, the hallmark of a great, healthy family is their ability to be playful together. This not only includes playing actual games, but more importantly, playing with each other’s words. A family that is able to be sarcastic with one another, even about “serious" matters like their feelings toward one another, is a family that is able to be resilient when matters actually do get serious. This means gently ribbing one another about peculiar tastes, or generously laughing at your own foibles and freeing everyone else to do the same. This means enjoying an expansive room to experiment with new preferences, new activities, and new pursuits. This, I believe is the “fun" referred to in the lyric above.
In a family focused around the kids, that family inevitably becomes far too serious. The parents become far more concerned about the kids doing the right thing than exploring life and learning along the way.
She's leaving home
Bye bye
Ever since our kids left the womb, they’ve been leaving us. Little by little, our children have been growing up and going away. First steps, first day of school, first period, first kiss, first broken heart, first car accident, first dorm, first job. This is what they were born to do—leave us. So that when they first become parents, they’ll get a new, but related job. They will get to help their kids leave them. Now, that’s our job.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to go show my wife this article so that she won’t leave me. I think I should put a Beatles song in the background to put us in the “reconnect" mood. I’m thinking “Why Don’t We Do It in the Road?"
by Hal Runkel, LMFT
Hal Runkel, LMFT, is the author of ScreamFree Parenting and founder of ScreamFree Living. For more information, visit www.screamfree.com |
