The Great Guidance Debate
As a child, you look up to someone to “guide” you to show you the way, the path of the real world that lies ahead of you. Guidance usually comes from someone older, someone you believe has already walked the road you’re about to step onto. Sometimes it comes from someone close in age, someone just a few steps ahead. In my case, it came from adults or as I like to call many of them now, “grown children.”
And let me be clear: some of these grown children are about as emotionally mature as my toddler when he’s told he can’t have ice cream for breakfast. Which is to say loud, confused, dramatic, and deeply offended by boundaries.
As a kid, you don’t know the difference between guidance and control. You just know whether something feels safe or suffocating. You know whether you’re being taught how to think or being told what to think. You know whether you’re being allowed to grow or quietly trained to obey.
True guidance, in my experience, means giving someone space to process what was said. It means offering direction without demanding compliance. It means presenting choices go left, go right, or stand still and respecting that the person might need time before moving at all. Guidance trusts that learning happens through experience, not force.
Control, on the other hand, removes choice. Control tells you what to do, when to do it, and how you’re supposed to feel about it afterward. Control doesn’t teach it dictates. It’s someone grabbing the steering wheel while you’re driving, insisting they know better, even though you’re the one sitting in the seat.
Guidance teaches you how to read road signs. Control decides the destination without asking where you want to go.
My Foundation: A Dad Who Got It Right
I was raised primarily by my father from around the age of two or three. My parents separated early, and my dad made the decision that I would live with him. That choice alone shaped my life more than I understood at the time.
Now, my father wasn’t perfect. This is the same man who once burned pancakes so badly the smoke alarm went off three times in one morning. But when it came to raising me, he understood something many adults never learn: children don’t need to be controlled they need to be guided.
I grew up surrounded by women as well my aunties, my dad’s cousin, my mom, and her friends. These women formed an unofficial council of influence in my life. Each brought something different: blunt honesty, nurturing patience, humor, protection, and sometimes tough love. They showed me that strength can look like softness and that wisdom doesn’t always raise its voice.
But one woman stood out in a way I didn’t fully appreciate until I was older my mom, Ren.
She took care of me like her own. She did my hair, and let me tell you, that alone deserves a medal. My hair was thick, stubborn, and completely uninterested in cooperation. Doing my hair wasn’t a task it was a negotiation. But she never complained. Never rushed. Never made me feel like I was too much.
Those hair sessions were quiet lessons in worth. She showed me, without words, that I deserved time, patience, and care. That love didn’t hurry. That I wasn’t a burden.
She prayed over me every night. When my father worked late, she let me sleep beside her. Those prayers wrapped around me like armor long before I knew I’d need it. They planted seeds of faith that would later become roots.
Waiting for Superman (aka Dad)
There were nights I refused to sleep, waiting for my father to come home from work. I’d camp out on the couch or in his bed, fighting sleep like it was my enemy. I was convinced that if I closed my eyes, even for a moment, I might miss him.
The sound of his keys in the door was magic. No matter how tired I was, I’d be wide awake instantly. Seeing him meant safety. Completion. Peace.
My father worked hard long hours, tiring jobs, responsibilities that weighed on him but he never brought that exhaustion home in a way that made me feel invisible. He showed up. He listened. He taught.
Life Lessons Disguised as Fun
He taught me respect. He taught me discipline. He taught me to stay out of trouble his number one rule, written in invisible capital letters over my life.
But more importantly, he taught me through experience.
He let me watch him work. Let me learn by doing. Swimming lessons, bike riding, yard work everything doubled as a classroom. He didn’t just tell me what to do. He showed me.
When he taught me to swim, he didn’t remove the fear immediately but he didn’t allow it to control me either. He taught me that fear and respect are different. You can acknowledge danger without being paralyzed by it.
The Training Wheels Lesson
Learning to ride a bike was one of the most important lessons of my childhood. At first, I had training wheels. They gave me confidence. Safety. Comfort.
Then one day when I finally felt secure he took them off.
I was devastated. I thought he was taking something away. What I didn’t understand then was that he was giving me something bigger: belief.
He trusted me before I trusted myself.
Life doesn’t let us keep training wheels forever. Comfort can’t last if growth is the goal. At some point, you have to wobble. You have to fall. You have to learn balance on your own.
Applying These Lessons Behind Bars
Now, as a 26-year-old mother of two who is currently incarcerated, these lessons hit differently.
Prison is built on control. Everything is scheduled. Everything is restricted. It’s easy to let that control seep into your mind and convince you that you no longer have agency.
But my father’s lessons remind me that control over my environment does not mean control over my spirit.
I still get to choose how I think. How I grow. How I mother from where I am.
Guidance, Not Domination
Too many adults confuse guidance with domination. They believe love means preventing mistakes instead of teaching resilience. But real guidance allows failure and stays close enough to help you stand back up.
Learn More About: Positive Parenting Strategies
Training Wheels for Motherhood
As a mother, I think about how I want to guide my children. I want to be their safety when needed but not their cage. I want to teach them balance, not dependency.
I want them to know that mistakes don’t define them, but growth requires accountability.
Faith in the Wobble
Sometimes I feel like I’ve failed my children. Like I didn’t live up to what I was taught.
But then I remember: falling doesn’t erase the lesson. Getting back up honors it.
Faith has become my training wheel now the thing that keeps me steady when everything else has been stripped away.
The Next Level
The next chapter won’t come with instructions. No training wheels. No guarantees.
But I carry what I was taught.
Guidance isn’t control. Love isn’t domination. Growth requires trust.
And maybe life keeps taking off our training wheels not to punish us but to remind us that balance was inside us all along.
The best riders aren’t the ones who never fell.
They’re the ones who kept pedaling anyway.
Read More: Lessons About Human Nature: 5 Powerful Lessons Animals Teach
