PSA to all parents out there: your children do not exist to give you nachas.
But wait, that’s confusing. Nachas is one of the best Yiddish words! It means pride and joy, particularly the kind felt from your children. Nachas is synonymous with children! We shep nachas when our children reach their Jewish milestones and do all the Jewish things. We even bless other parents that they should have nachas from their children!
But here’s the thing, and you’ve heard it before: children are not nachas machines. Children are human beings, messy combinations of nature and nurture, who are put on this earth to navigate their own journeys. Sometimes those journeys are not the ones we’d wished or planned for them. Sometimes, our children give us heartache, not nachas.
Language matters. We say, “You should have much nachas from your child.” Yes, it’s true. We should. We hope we do. But it’s not coming to us. We can’t expect it. Our parenting is not about us and what we should get out of it. It’s not our child’s job to give us nachas. We need to consider that the messaging surrounding nachas might reinforce our expectations about our efforts at parenting and how our children turn out “as a result.”
I’m not ready to give up the word nachas, and I’m not suggesting we do. When we feel those moments of nachas, we should lean in deeply, because they’re wonderful. But dear parent, take yourself out of the equation. Feel nachas for your child and their journey. And most importantly, our children should feel nachas and pride in themselves. In those moments, we get to watch, cheer and feel a little nachas on the sidelines.