“I want my son to be happy”

“I want my son to be happy”. I work with parents, and 100% of the families say that to me when they apply to enroll their child in school. I have five people who call me «Mom,» and I want the same thing, too.

But I know that happiness cannot be achieved without conflicts, frustrations, challenging moments, and difficult conversations.

It’s true that 30 years ago, there were situations that were considered normal and that shaped the lives of many children. Making fun of the kid who wore glasses, the redheaded girl, or assuming that a teacher might treat you badly just because he or she was having a bad day. But the pendulum swung the other way, and we went to the opposite extreme. We can’t promise our children that they’ll never face a difficult situation, nor can we spend our lives looking for someone to blame.

Our children will have to ride their own waves: a difficult classmate, a lost championship, an invitation that never came. We simply can’t prevent it. Because life goes on, and things happen. The philosopher Gregorio Luri explains it very well: “No matter how much you wish for life to treat you well, it always has a few surprises in store. But the wise thing to do isn’t to despise life because it throws us curveballs—it’s to love it in spite of them. Life is imperfect, just like parents.”.

Let’s work to make the world a more humane and welcoming place, but perhaps it’s okay to accept that being parents means navigating life with children who make mistakes, who change, who are sometimes victims (and at other times, yes, perpetrators as well)—and that in the midst of that turbulent, towering wave, the only thing we can guarantee them is that we’ll try to find the current that leads them to peace—and that lets them know that while there are sharks in the sea, the corals are less visible, but there are far more of them.