An engineer is someone who designs things to work in a certain way, precisely as their creator intended.  

If the thing that the engineer designed doesn’t do what it was meant to do, then the engineer is at fault. He’s a bad engineer. 

A shepherd, on the other hand, is a guide, someone who reveals truths to his flock. But a shepherd also understands he has no control beyond sideline influences. He says, ‘I can show you some things if you’re curious enough, but it’s up to you to decide if these things interest you enough to stick around or not.’ 

As parents, we often show up having assigned ourselves the role of the engineer. 

This is a mistake. 

Parents are not engineers. We can’t chart a course for our children the way we’d plot a route in Google Maps. 

It’s foolish to expect our children to live their lives like that, with us: bowling-alley guard rails, preventing derailment from the carefully designed track we’ve laid out in front of them. 

It doesn’t work that way. 

Neuroscientists have found that our children are born with hundreds of psychological traits that emerge regardless of our values, screen-time boundaries or efforts to shield them from bullies and unsavoury influences. 

Our children are genetic custodians – keepers of a handful of personality traits that previous generations have passed down.  

We cannot change that! 

When we realise this, and I believe on some level it’s not a hard truth to confront, we are liberated from the guilt that our parental generation is responsible for over-stockpiling.  

Yes, we can show, we can teach, we can listen, we can caution, we can shout: we can behave in any number of ways, but never as engineers. Only as shepherds. Because that’s what we are. 

Better still, we are part-time shepherds and part-time explorers. 

We job-share with our children.