She had grown up without much. She knew what it felt like to want things that weren’t possible and she had promised herself her children would not know that feeling.
She gave them the things. The lessons, the trips, the school that cost more than she was comfortable spending.
She watched them grow up and she could see they were grateful in the abstract way of people who have never been without. She also noticed they struggled with things she had never struggled with. The discomfort of not getting something. The patience required for things that didn’t come immediately. The resilience that she had, without choosing it, built from the early years of not having.
The gift of enough is real. Children who grow up with stability have advantages that matter. But the experience of want, of working for something, of being told no and learning to sit with that, produces something too. Something that doesn’t arrive with the provision of everything.
Parents who grew up poor often give everything. The question they rarely ask is: what did the scarcity teach me that I also want to give?
I don’t think she was wrong to give them what she did. The alternative is not to deprive children on purpose. But the question she’s sitting with is real.
She gave them what she never had. They don’t have what she has. She isn’t sure which of those things is the bigger loss.
What do you give a child that abundance can’t buy?
The things learned from scarcity, resourcefulness, patience, the ability to want without having, the understanding that not everything comes, are real advantages. They don’t require poverty to teach. But they do require the experience of wanting something and not immediately getting it. That’s the part that’s hard to give a child you are determined to protect from wanting.
She gave her children what she never had. She is watching them become people she loves and doesn’t entirely understand. That might be exactly how it’s supposed to go.
Some things worth sitting with:
- Is there something you’ve been trying to protect someone from that also built something in you?
- What did scarcity or hardship teach you that you want to pass on without the hardship?
- What’s the difference between giving your children everything and giving them what they need?
There’s a related thread worth following: She Built the Business. It Took Fifteen Years. It Still Wasn’t Enough..
Inspired by a real story shared anonymously online.