The Chaperone

The Chaperone is a series on parenting, intergenerational trauma, and raising children in the digital age. This is Part 1 of an ongoing series.

A lot of you have been asking when the babies are coming, and the simple answer is I do not yet feel ready. Perhaps you can help me in my preparation by joining me on an introspective journey to understand what I need to parent effectively in these modern times. One of the fears I have is the traumas of my own life indirectly causing harm to my own children. I am not talking about harm out of malice, but through thoughtlessness rooted in thinking that some of the maladaptive ways of my upbringing are our culture and just how parenting is done.

I know there are those of you who this may not apply to because you have healed the traumas of your own childhood to ensure they do not affect how you parent or you were blessed with a trauma-free childhood. If you are in this category, I hope you can join the conversation and share tips that work for raising children in these modern days. For those whose traumas are not yet healed and may negatively affect how you raise your children, this is not a condemnation — after all to condemn you will be to condemn myself. Instead, this is an invitation for us to figure out together how we can be better chaperones for the children we have been entrusted to parent.

One of the things I believe deeply is that parenting is a sacred privilege, and the only requirement is to chaperone the children we parent (and really all children entrusted to us in any capacity). The meaning of the word chaperone has two important parts: to guide and to keep safe. A lot of parents in their quest to guide end up trying to mold the children into specific paths. This is a major source of trauma for a lot of people — and the primary cause of some parents trying to raise their children exactly how they were raised. However, that is not the right way to go about it. A parent’s duty is to guide and keep the child safe as the child explores and expresses who they came here to be.

The children we parent are individuals with their own personalities and innate inclinations. The parenting privilege is to approach them with curiosity to learn and discover who they are and where they are headed. It is not to get in the way of their agency by molding them how we think is best. After all, it is our duty to guide them and to keep them safe — and keeping them safe includes keeping them safe from themselves.

The curiosity about who our children are would help us know how best to guide them so that we can cultivate and nurture who they came into this world to be. I imagine part of our duty to keep them safe is ensuring that as they become who they are meant to be, they do so at an age appropriate pace. The digital literacy gap — where our children are often more technologically advanced than we are — stands directly in the way. This matters a lot because if we fail in our duty to witness them in their becoming, they can find community elsewhere in online communities where it is hard to ensure the guidance they receive is age appropriate and safe.

It is for this reason that I am starting this series. I will write an article each week for the next few weeks. As we prepare for the series, I invite you to reflect on your own childhood. How did the parental figures in your life witness and honor who you were? How effectively did they guide and keep you safe in your journey? How are you guiding and keeping the children entrusted to you safe? How much of your approach is influenced by how you were raised? As I am not yet a parent, many of my ideas are speculative and I invite you to correct me. Please help me get ready to bring the babies you all keep asking for by joining me in this dialogue.