My wife and I, our whole job is to provide, to protect, to love, to facilitate. . . . It’s to find out who our children are, find out their likes and their dislikes, and try to help them through life, to find themselves. It’s not about us.
—Dwyane Wade
We should always try to learn from parents who have had it harder than us, who have really been through the wringer.
Brandon Boulware is the son of a minister. He’s a lawyer, an avowed Christian man, a husband, and the father of four children. In 2021, he gave deeply moving testimony to the Missouri House of Representatives about his struggles with his transgender daughter. He told the lawmakers that he’d long tried—out of fear and love and a desire to protect—to keep his child from wearing girls’ clothes and playing on girls’ teams. Then one day, she asked him if she could go play with the neighbors. It’s time for dinner, he said. But if I go out in boy clothes, can I play with them? came the reply. Then it hit him: he’d accidentally taught his child that not being who she is was a way to be rewarded.
What Boulware so beautifully communicates in his brief testimony is a lesson for all parents. “Let them have their childhoods,” he pleads. “Let them be who they are.”
Maybe you’re artistic and your kid is not. Maybe you’re athletic and your kid is not. Maybe you’re not religious and your teenager is. Maybe you’re liberal and your kid is not. Whatever it is, let them be who they are. Let them experiment. Let them discover themselves—let them discover their truths. Let them have their childhoods.
You might not like the results of these explorations. They might challenge your most deeply held assumptions. But guess what? That’s a you problem.