With the certainty of Emma's passing today, a hundred different things went swirling through my head. Since my first year coaching was 1997, obviously I've seen kids grow up and be 20-somethings. Some kids are married, some are rocket scientists, and some are even mothers. When you get a few months to spend with them, you get to see how their personalities develop. Sometimes they do brilliant things, as well as stupid things. You also get to see the kinds of relationships they have with their parents.
I've always taken the responsibility of coaching very seriously, even with the kids that were a total pain in the ass, because I know there are long-term consequences. Some of the most influential people in my life were teachers or mentors in one way or another, even if I didn't spend a lot of time with them. I very much have the realization as a new father that the impact is far greater when it's your own kid.
When I was seeing a therapist around the time of my divorce, one of his themes was that much of your social skill base comes from your parents. For example, people who stay in broken relationships filled with the toxicity of guilt and mistrust, often do so because they observed their parents do the same thing (a case for not staying together "for the kids," by the way). Imagine my concern with that, since I only had monthly weekend visitation with my dad, and my relationship with my step-dad was not great either. I have an incomplete blueprint for full-time child-father relationships.
The thing I have observed about these relationships time and time again is that there is definitely a sweet spot for involvement and trust. No involvement will lead a kid to destructive behavior, obviously, but the opposite extreme can be just as bad. One of my former kids had a great dad in terms of his involvement, to the extent he missed only one game of hers through high school, club and college, but he was so hard on her about everything. I could see her desire grow through college to just be her own person, potentially doing stupid things just to make the point.
The investigation into Emma's drowning already suggests that she made some bad decisions. That's tragic. Emma was a baby once too, and when I knew her, a teenager. I never imagined at the time that this could happen to her. So when I had some quiet time with Simon, even though I'm sure he didn't understand, I told him that I loved him dearly, but some day I would have to trust him to make good decisions for himself. It's hard to imagine at the start of this journey that there's only so much I can do before he's on his own. I'm going to do my best to give him what he needs to make good decisions. Beyond that, I'll have to be at peace with the idea that it will ultimately be up to him.
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