The center of all things.

When I was young I learned that I was not the center of things in my life.  Though my family loved me and gave me many gifts, I never felt more special or important than anyone else in the family and always felt that my parents were the “most important” members of our family for what they knew, what they had done and what they provided to us children.  Even as I grew older and went out on my own to start my own family, they always still had this slightly exalted position in my eyes.  Not that I agreed with what they said or shared all their values, but they always seemed to have earned a higher status, again in my eyes.  Then I look at my children and see them as the center of their own worlds.  Yes they love their parents and even at times respect our opinions and seek them out, but they were raised to be the “most important people” in the family. By that I mean not that they were directly told that, but that they were always the center of what we did and why we did it, with few exceptions.  They had rules and were expected to be good, but they were placed at the center of the family.  I didn’t do it because I read it somewhere, but I just felt that that was what should be done.  So where does that put them now?  They are young adults, insecure in many ways, still trying to figure out how to live and who to listen to.  They are not that much different than I was early in my adulthood.   They will be fine