Looking to Parent Well

There was a meme floating around Facebook that went something like: Teaching your child to question/stand up to authority means they will eventually question/stand up to you. This popped up on both our FB feeds while son#2 was visiting. He proceeded to tell me about a person he knew from college who had a confrontation with his father. The bottom line was that the son had an opinion that differed from his father’s and was unwilling to change his mind just because his father told him to. The father decided that might makes right and discovered that his “little boy” was an adult who could and would defend himself. This led to a discussion about his childhood, parenting, and the end result – a fully fledged successful adult. I told him that I hoped that I had “done right” by him even though I probably made mistakes. He reassured me that I had been and continue to be a great mom. He did point out a couple things:

1. He thanked me for keeping my promise to let him quit Suzuki violin lessons once he completed book 10. Of course he never did quit and he only got to book 9 before he graduated and went to college. He considered my “deal” to have been a stoke of genius and a little tricky. (He is a professional musician)

2. He said that if I hadn’t introduced him to foods/dishes from around the world he’d have ended up like a couple of his friends who refuse to eat anything except burgers and fries. He has been doing lots more cooking and has asked for recipes. That made my heart happy.

3. He was grateful that books were an integral part of his upbringing. He said that when we were all taking turns reading the latest Harry Potter book that it reinforced the fact that reading was something you did for life – not just as a kid in school. He has been reading a lot since he lives alone. He was bragging that he read nearly 100 books last year and hopes to better that number this year!

4. The one thing he holds against me is that I sold his TMNT figures at a rummage sale. But to be fair, he said I could and I did give him the money generated by the sale (he was in HS)… But now they’d be collector’s items and worth some coin. Hindsight is 20/20!

So to sum it up, his father and I did lots of things right and a couple of things we could have done differently but the end result speaks for itself. We have 2 fine citizens, who are respectful, caring, law abiding, and socially and environmentally conscientious. I think we did a decent job after all!

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