Despite 20+ years of independence before him, I never decided upon my own rule set. Maybe that’s why I meandered until I became a parent:

What does it mean to live well? On my own I never knew; only he could have shown me.

Judgment is paralyzing because it fixes our interpretations. Mine had always been a filter, excluding other perspectives and methods. And I tended to rank mine highly; that meant I could ignore those below. But watching him develop motivations showed me how experience guides our success as it shapes our goals.

I realized that however real our observations may be, they involve interpretation we leverage on experience. And even at five, his perspective was just as real as mine.

Shifting from preeminence to equality with a child was sobering, yet liberating. All my mistakes became clear.

Like everyone, the desire for independence was one of the most common themes of my life. I was always unsure why. By examining how I used that self-reliance — despite all the mistakes — parenting ended the question altogether and made it clear that agency is the only goal.

He only needs two things, a model and time. Everything else is simply support.