What I Intend to Say to My Children When They Have Grown Beyond My Control and Have Rebuked Me for My Interference

I must add a forethought to this post: my daughter is so unbelievably sweet, I cannot imagine the day that she might rebel against me. From all sources, I ought to prepare for it, but it just doesn't seem realistic at this point.

This post was engendered by a daydream about my son (who has a very exuberant countenance). In this daydream, he was a young man and had finally succeeded in loosening my fatherly grasp.

I told him this: Everything I have ever taught you was to prepare you for life without me. I know that must sound so pompous right now, but you never saw yourself crying in my arms as a baby. The ultimate goal of every unique life is self-sufficiency. Every time you displayed discontent, I tempered my response with the knowledge that being too soft might make you weak to the world, and that being too hard might make you too hard-hearted to be any good to your brethren. Take all of my words in your memory and do what you will. I am not a slavemaster...I have only ever been a guide.

I said this to him in my daydream and the dream faded...