One of the great things about having adult children is the ability to view your parenting in retrospect, knowing how things turned out. At this point, my kids are 21 and almost-24 years old; one has graduated college, and the other is nearly there. Both of them have faced various struggles on the long road to adulthood, but they’ve both turned out to be phenomenal people. They’re smart, funny, compassionate, responsible–and I like to think Mike and I had a little something to do with that.
I certainly wouldn’t claim to have done a perfect job of parenting. There are lots of moments I would handle differently, if I could go back in time. But, looking back on that long road, I know for sure my kids benefited from our parenting in some pretty specific ways.
For instance:
We let our kids make decisions, which means they now know how.
Not long ago, I was talking with my daughter about how many of her adult friends still say things like “My parents would never let me [travel abroad, move in with my boyfriend, get a job in another city, etc.].”
“Every time I hear someone say something like that,” Jordan observed, “I’m thinking You don’t need your parents’ permission! Make your own decisions!”
Many of the parents I know believed it was their job to make every decision on their child’s behalf until that child left home. Many of those same parents then pushed their kids into the deep end of the grownup pool. It’s no surprise to me that many of those kids are still waiting for someone to tell them how to swim.
As a professor, I deal with these students all the time. They have no idea how to make choices for themselves, and this extends from the very simple (like choosing a thesis statement) to the more complex (like choosing a class schedule within the context of a four-year degree plan.)
Of course there were many moments when I had to make choices for my children. But I tried to step back and let them make decisions for themselves as often as I could. If they ran into trouble at school, I asked whether I should intervene. When they struggled with a friendship dilemma, I talked through the potential outcomes of various solutions.
I often worried that this made me seem like an indifferent or just plain lazy parent, but in retrospect I think it was the right approach. Both of my kids are now capable adults, largely because they learned how to manage the decision-making process for themselves.
We held our kids accountable for their decisions.
The hardest part of parenting for me, by far, was holding the line when my kids messed up–or letting them make choices I disagreed with. It is no fun at all when the people whose happiness is more important to you than anything else in the world are unhappy. It’s even less fun when you are the cause of that unhappiness.
Fortunately, there were only a handful of times when our kids had to be grounded (or otherwise restricted.) That’s because they figured out, early on, that we were going to follow through and hold them accountable for bad choices. And they always knew they could come to us and admit to making a mistake. Being honest was always more important than being right.
I hated every minute of that accountability. I still do. I would love to be the mother who swoops in to alleviate her adult children’s problems, rather than letting them learn from their mistakes. But I know I won’t be doing anybody any favors, in the long run–so I don’t.
We always operated from a foundation of mutual respect.
My son turned 21 in early June. Although many of his friends started drinking alcohol long before I was legal to do so–and honestly, I wouldn’t have been surprised to discover that he had, too–Andrew assured me that he hadn’t.
“Mostly out of respect for you and Dad,” he said. “I know you would have been so disappointed in me if I’d got caught doing something that dumb.”
Mike and I always tried hard to treat our children with the respect we wanted them to show us, so it made me feel particularly proud to hear my son say that respect had played a key role in this decision.
Andrew shows that respect in other ways, too–by letting us know where he’s going and when he’ll be back (since he’s still living at home while he’s in college), by keeping us apprised of changes in his schedule, and by letting me know when he won’t be home for dinner. We do the same for him in return–letting him know when we we’re running late, or when our work schedules will get in the way of having dinner together.
Respect was never a one-way street in our household. There was no Because I’m your mom–I took the time to explain my reasoning. And because of this, my kids learned how to apply that reasoning on their own. They learned to anticipate the consequences they might face.
Most importantly, they learned how to move through the world with an emphasis on respect for each person they encounter. If that were the only lesson I could say I’d taught my kids, that would be quite enough.
No Comments