"Give them our love but not our thoughts" - What? How?

These days we are listening to "Sweet Honey in the Rock" and one song that is getting repeated play at our home is Khalil Gibran's "On Children" sung by Sweet Honey.... Wanted to share the lyrics here

Your Children
They are not your children
They are the sons and the daughters of Life, longing for itself
They come through you but they are not from you
And though they are with you, they belong not to you

You can give them your love but not your thoughts
They have their own thoughts
You can house their bodies but not their souls
'Cos their souls dwell in a place of tomorrow
That you cannot visit not even in your dreams
You can strive to be like them,
But you cannot make them just like you


As you can tell from the title of the post those two lines got my husband and i thinking. Our child is trying to ape everything we do. Granted that has made us more responsible about what we do, say, and even think! Now is that equivalent to giving our child "our thoughts"?

As I watched the debate on Prop 8 unfurl last year, I was amazed to see the number of young kids (some still in diapers and strollers!) out there carrying banners for / against Prop 8, I was wondering do the kids really understand what they are doing out there... a clear case of parents giving them their love AND their own thoughts!

That made me think of my own. Here is our child growing up "accepting" that "Tom's of Maine" is a cooler toothpaste brand than Dora's, believing that "The Nation" is to mommy as "Lady Bug" is to her, capable of picking Gandhi, Howard Zinn, Naomi Klein, Arundathi Roy, Chomsky out of a line-up if they are ever in one (and they look like their mug shots on the back cover of their books), and incidentally loves to sing the above mentioned song... constantly reminding us that "we can give her our love but not our thoughts".

I am not trying to make her like me (or am I?) but I don't know any other way to bring her up. I guess the key takeaway is for us to be there giving her the tools to make good choices while accepting of what/who she becomes as she starts asserting herself and making her own decisions beyond choosing what to wear or what to eat today!

That's a wrap!