All My Children

On the other hand, such parallel investment in play can work well for a time and then backfire through adult motives. The following story is an illustration of the point, and it involves a partly happy but much more unhappy memory that haunted a highly successful man all his life. The man’s father was very much involved in stamp collecting, so the youngster needed little urging to become an avid stamp collector too. As a boy, he was naturally intrigued by his father’s absorption in the activity, and the father encouraged his son’s interest. For a period while his father worked at the desk with his own stamps, the young boy had a wonderful time sitting on the floor fooling around with his stamps, weaving all sorts of fantasies around them, convinced that what he was doing was every bit as important as what his father did, if not also the same thing. It made him happy to be and act like his father; this was the happy part of the memory. Parent and child were engrossed in the same activity, each in a way appropriate to his age.

But then the father began to insist that his son become “serious” about what he was doing, and learn all that was involved in the lore and science of stamp collecting. This was a terrible shock and disappointment to the boy, who up to this moment had believed that what he had been doing was very serious. Now he was no longer permitted to indulge his fantasies as he organized the stamps in his own way, but was told he should be systematic in a mature way—the father’s way. What had previously been a strong bond between father and son quickly became a source of mutual irritation, with the father insisting that the boy handle the stamps in the “right way.” This demand made no sense to the boy, since it required too much of his young patience and much more knowledge than he possessed.

As long as he was free to weave his daydreams about the stamps and his father was equally involved in his own thoughts about stamps, each could enjoy what he was doing. But when the father turned conscious educator and tried to teach not by the example of his serious involvement, which had been the source of the boy’s interest, but by pushing the boy to go about stamp collecting in an adult way, their common activity became a source of great conflict. The boy felt (rightly) that he could never satisfy his father’s requirements, and the father felt that his son was not getting all he should out of stamp collecting. Decades later, the boy—now a fully grown man— was still sad that a common activity which for a time had been and could have remained a deep bond between him and his father had become instead a source of deep disappointment.

Many a parent, like the father in this story, gets carried away by his child’s questions on how to do a thing, or by the wish to see his child do well. He tends to answer the child’s questions in great technical detail, mistakenly trying to teach higher skills and minutiae rather than helping the child find his own age-appropriate level of doing and understanding. The child does want to acquire expertise but can do so only bit by bit in his own way, and in his own good time. Forcing premature professionalism on children can sour their original interest in an activity, since it is no longer enjoyable for them on their terms.

The real tragedy—a tragedy that is repeated in many more ways and many more times in children’s lives than parents realize—is that the father’sintentions were good: he wanted to make stamp collecting something he and his son could really share. The boy too was motivated by the desire to do something that would tie him more closely to his father. But when the father gave the child the impression that what he was doing did not come up to the father’s standards, the boy became disappointed, not only in stamp collecting and what it could offer, but in himself, because he could not live up to his father’s expectations.

They continued to work together on stamps, but only for a short while. The father became frustrated because his efforts to teach the boy the proper way of collecting stamps got nowhere and led only to mutual dissatisfaction. The boy felt even more frustrated, because now he no longer could enjoy what had been his greatest pleasure in life. Even worse was the disappointment in himself. Up to the moment the father decided his son should become more “serious” about stamp collecting, the boy had felt great about himself; but now he felt inferior, unable to achieve what was expected of him.

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