Do you believe this?

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward not tarries with yesterday.

Kahlil Gibran
The Prophet

This is a passage which has been inspiring me even before I even had the concept of being a mother myself within me. The thought that the parent is merely the custodian of a child is something I am growing to believe more firmly by the day. I can give my child my love, but cannot expect him to love me in return. I can try to mould his thoughts in the way I feel appropriate but I have no control over them, I cannot expect him to think the way I do. In him I see life's longing for itself. In him I see tomorrow. My tomorrow. My set of DNA fused with my husband's DNA, going into the future with the promise of replicating ourselves many times over, through generations, leaving a bit of ourselves as sand in this universe after we are dead and gone. He came through me, but not from me. I couldnt create him. It is a power which created him. Which blew life into the cocktail of sperm and egg and nourished the zygote to term. I am but a custodian. My son belongs to the universe. He is not mine to be possessive about, he is mine to care for, to nurture and to release into the universe, where he belongs. This is the most humbling experience ever. You can give birth, raise, and care for a child, but a child is never truly yours and will go on to live his or her own life.
Which also makes you realise your parents have done the same. When you were adult, you moved on from your parents into your own life, and so you should expect from your child. And prepare for it.

And more:
Take this analogy from Swami Vivekananda: You cannot make a plant grow in soil unsuited to it. A child teaches itself. But you can help it to go forward in its own way. What you can do is not of the positive nature, but of the negative. You can take away the obstacles, but knowledge comes out of its own nature. Loosen the soil a little, so that it may come out easily. Put a hedge round it; see that it is not killed by anything, and there your work stops. You cannot do anything else. The rest is a manifestation from within its own nature.

Yes, I am in this kind of a mood today. When I realise that the child doesnt need me, rather I need the child.