**Meet The Dads** Lorne Michaels on The Heartbreaking Job of Making Your Kids Strong Enough To Walk Away

 

LORNE MICHAELS: "I think my job as a father is to make my children strong enough to walk away, and that is heartbreaking. I do it professionally as well, making [the cast] good enough to leave. It’s a very hard thing because who wouldn’t want to keep them young, dependent, and vulnerable? The key thing for me is that my children are not going to be the proof of my worth to the world — I’m not going to live through them. I’m not hoping to be able to say, “My kid’s the president.” It’s not about that. It’s a cliché, but every parent says, “I just want them to be happy.” To me, that means feeling useful, feeling busy, and having the emotional capacity to connect, to be there for another person. The joy of being a dad is watching my children turn into who they’re going to be.

I think it’s naive to think your kids are a young version of you. Sure, you see yourself in them or say, “I remember that expression or I remember being confused by that,” but they’re not you. And know your children you won’t really find out who they are until much, much later. If they’re fearful of expressing themselves or if the expectations are too high, it’s likely you won’t find out who they are at all. They still have to have rules — because in their perfect world my kids would just watch television all the time — and they still have to get their work done. But I can’t make them into something they’re not. I can practice with them — and I’ve thrown my fair share of pop-ups and passes — but I can’t make them into better athletes.

What I’m getting at is that if you’re observant and if you know your children — their eccentricities, their uniqueness — you begin to see more clearly the kind of kids they are, who they are at their core. As a dad, my job is to help my children truly be who they are, and that’s where putting in the hours becomes so important."

**

We all want the best for our children. It’s only natural to want to protect them from making the same mistakes we made or to spare them unnecessary pain and disappointment. Likewise, most parents want to provide their children with opportunities they didn’t have or didn’t fully realize. These well-intentioned and usually healthy parenting instincts, however, need to be kept in check every step of the way. We need to avoid the temptation to see our children as extensions of ourselves. They are not Mini-Me’s.

In his vision of raising two sons and a daughter to be unique, emotionally connected, and happy individuals, Lorne reminds us of this simple yet critical truth when he says that your kids are not a younger version of you. The potential problem with seeing your child as an extension of you is that he or she can easily become more of an object than an in- dividual. Under the guise of “wanting the best for him” or “making sure she has opportunities I never had,” you may unwittingly lose sight of who your child is or what she wants for herself. In other words, your influence and “guidance” can begin to overshadow your child’s individuality.

Comments

[Curious]

Doesn't Lorne Michaels have two more children from one of his former marriages he ended?

Just curious why the first family, those children, and his fathering of them is not mentioned.