Tuesday Real Talk

Give Them the Foundation — Then Let Them Become Themselves

I was watching Shedeur Sanders during a press conference, and while listening to this young man speak, I had a thought.

Deion Sanders raised him well.

Now, before anybody gets started… 🤣

I don’t personally know Deion Sanders.

I don’t personally know Shedeur Sanders.

I’m speaking solely from what I observed and the impression it left on me.

What I saw was a young man who knew how to handle himself.

He was confident without needing to put somebody else down.

He wasn’t easily pulled into negativity.

He wasn’t interested in saying something against his teammates just because somebody gave him an opportunity to do it.

He repeatedly brought the conversation back to the present and what HE needed to do.

And I respected that.

Then I thought about his father.

Deion Sanders certainly isn’t lacking confidence. 🤣

He built an extraordinary career and has always had a very strong personality.

But when I look at Shedeur, I don’t see a young man trying to become another Deion Sanders.

I see Shedeur becoming Shedeur.

And THAT got me thinking about parenting.

As parents, are we supposed to raise little versions of ourselves?

I don’t think so.

I believe part of our responsibility is to give our children a foundation.

Teach them values.

Teach them respect.

Teach them responsibility.

Teach them how to work.

Teach them how to lose.

Teach them how to win without believing they’re better than everybody else.

Teach them that actions have consequences.

Teach them how to treat people.

Teach them that they’re going to make mistakes and that a mistake doesn’t have to become their identity.

Give them confidence.

Give them love.

Give them somewhere safe to land.

Build the foundation.

And I can speak about the importance of that foundation because I was blessed to have one myself.

My parents gave me a solid foundation growing up.

But it wasn’t only my parents.

I was regularly exposed to their peers and other adults around them who also became part of what I saw, heard and learned.

There were expectations.

There were examples.

There were values being reinforced.

There were adults around me showing me, in different ways, what responsibility, character and adulthood looked like.

Did I grow up and do everything exactly the way they would have done it?

Absolutely not. 🤣

I became Susan.

I became Lady Flava.

I’ve made my own decisions.

I’ve made mistakes.

I’ve taken different roads.

I’ve learned some lessons the easy way and plenty of others the HARD way. 😂

But that foundation traveled with me.

And the older I get, the more I recognize pieces of what my parents and the people around them gave me.

Some things I probably didn’t fully appreciate when I was younger make a whole lot more sense to me now.

And after living 66 years, making my own choices, raising my own family, experiencing successes, experiencing failures and becoming the woman I am today, I can say something very simply:

I am proud to be my parents’ child.

They gave me my foundation.

But they couldn’t live my life for me.

I had to decide what I was going to build on top of it.

And I think that’s part of the gift of a strong foundation.

It doesn’t tell you exactly who you have to become.

It gives you something solid to stand on while you figure that out for yourself.

That’s why I believe giving a child a strong foundation matters so much.

But eventually?

We have to allow them to build their own house on top of it.

And their house may look NOTHING like ours. 😂

Our children may choose careers we wouldn’t choose.

They may have interests we don’t understand.

They may raise their children differently.

They may communicate differently.

They may see the world differently.

They may make decisions that have us sitting somewhere saying…

“Now WHY would you do THAT?” 🤣

But they’re not supposed to become us.

They’re supposed to become themselves.

I think sometimes parents struggle with that transition.

When our children are little, we’re responsible for almost everything.

We decide what they eat.

Where they go.

What they’re allowed to do.

What time they go to bed.

Who they’re around.

Then those little people start developing opinions.

Then independence.

Then adulthood.

And eventually, parenting has to change.

You can advise.

You can encourage.

You can share what you’ve learned.

You can tell them when you believe they’re heading in the wrong direction.

But at some point, you have to recognize:

This is their life.

And here’s something else I believe.

When an adult child accomplishes something great, parents can absolutely be proud of the role they played in raising that person.

But the accomplishment still belongs to them.

Their parent may have planted seeds.

Their parent may have watered those seeds.

Their parent may have protected those seeds while they were growing.

But that child eventually had to develop their own roots.

They had to make decisions.

They had to work.

They had to fail.

They had to learn.

They had to get back up.

They had to discover who they were when Mom and Dad weren’t standing beside them.

That’s where I think parenting gets really interesting.

Maybe successful parenting isn’t creating a child who grows up and does everything exactly the way you would do it.

Maybe successful parenting is raising someone who has enough of a foundation to make their own decisions when you’re no longer making those decisions for them.

Will they always get it right?

Absolutely not.

Neither did we. 😂

And sometimes their mistakes will be painful to watch.

But perhaps that’s part of becoming your own person too.

So watching Shedeur Sanders made me think about Deion Sanders differently.

Yes, I can see what appears to be a father’s influence.

But I can also see a young man developing his own identity.

And I respect both.

Give them the foundation.

Give them the tools.

Give them wisdom.

Give them love.

Give them discipline.

Give them room to make mistakes.

And then…

Give them room to become themselves.

Because ultimately, our children’s greatness doesn’t have to look anything like ours.

It belongs to them.

So here’s my Tuesday Real Talk question:

Are we raising our children to become who WE want them to be… or are we giving them the foundation they need to discover who THEY are?

Just something worth thinking about.

From Flava in Her Tower 🌻