From their perspective, all the good in their lives seems to flow to them naturally, not through anything special the grown-ups are doing. Children may see their parents working long hours or worrying about money, but they do not put it together meaningfully.
In fact, the first seeds of appreciation for one's parents are often sown in a person's twenties, around the time of a significant job or first child. At that point, the newness of adulthood is a challenge, but there is an energizing sense of pride in holding an adult role at long last. In their twenties, children are glad to be out of their parent's hair and at their own helm. They don't need input from Mom and Dad in their careers, relationship, and child-rearing.
But by their thirties, although those same kids still have the confidence of newly hatched adults, they begin to get a feel for the repetitiousness of it all. They now see the value of the longer-term goals. While they defend their independence, they are now willing to see their parents as valuable sources of information about important things like buying a house, getting loans, or handling a problem at work.
It isn't until somewhere in the front end of the forties that these children begin to see what it is like to have one's options and freedoms narrowed down by finances and the first hints of natural aging. Meanwhile, they realize that their responsibilities hold a constant or increased value alongside these sobering facts. They might realize what it is like to feel trapped in a job or to give up a dream so that a child can recognize theirs instead. Moments of reflection begin at this age. For the first time in their lives, these adult children understand how hard it can be to be a grown-up day in and day out. They now know how much their parents really gave to them and how much they were loved.
Only in the fifties, when aging and conservation of energies make up more contemplative moments, the middle-aged offspring begin to get it. They sincerely see what it feels like to keep working past the point where you want to. They realize how little control they have over so many significant issues in life and how necessary it is to keep going even when you don't feel like it. They finally think of the unmistakable pangs of gratitude for what their parents gave them in their earlier years.
Now that they know what it costs...
But in the sixties and seventies, those same ungrateful children become their parent's would-be siblings in their mutual understanding of the inevitability of human decline. The little narcissisms of earlier life have been sorted through for the most part, and the elderly parents and aging children increasingly resemble people who have served in the same war, with much more in common than they could ever have imagined in earlier life.
The moral of the story is: If you treat your children with love and fairness, and your heart is in the right place, it will be a mere forty years before they will gladly give you your due. That's when they will be able to be grateful and proud of all you did. But until then, they are too intent on creating their own lives. As they should be, right? But don't be discouraged. They need that first forty years of necessary arrogance to do all they will do without looking back.
Until they are old enough to know better, take comfort from the fact that their gratitude is germinating in a long, slow process that will be all the more beautiful when it finally blooms. They then will know what you never in a million years could tell them in words:
Only when they have loved and given in kind will they arrive at genuine gratitude, realizing for the first time all they received.
And looking back to learn for the future.
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