A friend confided recently that she can’t read The Giving Tree anymore because she cries too much. “Why does it make you cry” I queried. “Because the tree gives all she has” and then my friend paused, “I would do the same for my kids.” “Hopefully,” I replied, “you’ll raise sons who can take care of themselves without dismembering you.”
“Once there was a tree…”
The Giving Tree by Shell Silverstein is a nostalgic classic. Silverstein is a literary genius and I’ve spent hours reading his poems to my children. His material has more layers than an onion because he was more than clever, he is thought provoking as well. In The Giving Tree, Silverstein personifies a tree, giving her a maternal role. As the title suggest, the tree gives endlessly and is happy to do it. When the boy wants to play, she accommodates. When he wants a house, she lets him cut her branches. She loves the boy and gives all she has for him to be happy.
Many people find the book emotionally charged. It knocks us in the gut as we read about the mother tree giving and the boy taking, but why does a little book about an imaginary tree pack such an emotional punch? One reason: Because it’s true.
What does Silverstein tell us about the boy? We know he’s a typical little boy who just want to play. The boy seems to love the tree and the tree wants those days of play to never end. We also know the boy grows and he gets a girl, then materialism grabs him by the labels and drags him away from those long summer days of play. As the pages turn, we learn the boy ends up with no family, no friends, and nothing of value. Only the tree is left to love him.
“And the tree was happy…but not really.”
We see the story all around us. The boys who take and take and take. The parents who give and give and give. The young women who guilt and guilt and guilt. We know the men and women who spend their lives taking from their parents and resenting them when they have nothing left to give. Those children only show up when they need something. They learn to value people for what they have to give them and end up fighting over contents of their parents will. But things don’t satisfy, relationships do.
The thing that’s hardest about reading Silverstein is the brutally honest account of life as it is – many adorable little children grow up to become wickedly obsessed with all the wrong things. The boy in The Giving Tree seems alone, which is a haunting prospect for most of us.
A mother’s love is about more than giving. It’s about teaching respect, helping children learn life skills, demonstrating how meaningful relationships work, and much more. What’s wrong with this story is the boy isn’t shown the fundamentals of life – no tough love, discipline, and he’s not taught to respect the tree. Like most boys, the boy in the story is not guided by wisdom, so he turns destructive and ends up ruining his life and destroying the tree. The boy’s wants are enabled by a loving, but ineffective tree. What he needs is a mother and a father.
“Swing from my branches”
As parents, let the kids swing from our branches, but let’s help them avoid the miserable fate of the boy by working into their lives a sense of decency. We are called to be parents, not trees.
