Tuesday, February 9, 2016

The Responsibilities of Parenting



Parenting is weird at my house these days. 

Really weird.  Mostly because I don’t find myself doing a lot of it any more.

Don’t get me wrong.  Better Half and I still live here.  We still foot the bill, ask the questions, drive the carpools, “inspire” by nagging, impose the curfews, listen to the stories, play out the worst-case scenarios in our heads, drive ourselves crazy, and try to steer Pozo de Dinero in the general direction of The Good Ship Lollipop. 
But now that our youngest child is fourteen and our oldest is a month shy of twenty-one, our responsibilities have shifted.

We used to be responsible for our children.
We were responsible for their safety.  For their basic needs.  For their health.  For their welfare.  For their behavior.  For their grades.  For their friendships.  For their spiritual/moral upbringing. And being responsible for all of that stuff takes an awful lot of doing.  From sun-up to sun-down kind of doing.  Sometimes with very little sleep.   

But now I’ve discovered that we’re moving out of that phase of parenting.  We are becoming less and less responsible for our children.

We are knee-deep in experiencing our teens as unique individuals completely separate from Better Half and me.  They have their own thoughts, ideas, paths, and stories. 

This is both freeing and terrifying. 

Sometimes—many times—they do or say or think unbelievably amazing things that leave me in awe of the humans that they are.  The mother part of me who has spent all of her adult life being responsible for these people wants to take credit for them. 

It’s also terrifying.

Because sometimes, they do or say or think unbelievably bone-headed and crazy things that leave me in fear of how on earth they are going to survive until their brains are completely developed.  The mother part of me who is 62% martyr and 38% narcissist feels obligated to take responsibility for these things as well.

But the thing is, they are reaching a point where they are responsible for their own thoughts, feelings, and actions. And I firmly believe that for me to take either the credit or the responsibility for their choices or ideas or actions is to diminish their individuality and squelch an important part of their process of becoming an adult.

As we enter this new stage with our kids, I’ve noticed something.  The responsibility hasn’t diminished.  But instead of being responsible for them, I find that we are now responsible to them.

I am responsible to love them unconditionally.
I am responsible to be an example—both by being transparent with my mistakes and forthright with my successes—of the kind of person I hope they will be.
I am responsible to listen.
I am responsible to ask questions.
I am responsible to forgive and to offer grace and to allow them to experience natural consequences of their decisions—no matter how hard it might be for them, or for me.
I am responsible to stand beside them if they need an ally.  
I am responsible to be truthful with them.
I am responsible to be the voice of reason (when I can—when they’ll listen) that bridges the gap between their frontal lobe and the rest of their brain until that connection is made.
I’m responsible to stock the fridge, keep the laundry detergent full, show them how to manage their finances and then get out of the way and let them make their own lunches, turn all their white socks red, and have their debit card denied because they added instead of subtracted, or misjudged the day their paycheck was deposited.   

Most importantly, I believe I am responsible to pray for them.  For their safety, their basic needs, their friends, their choices, their health, their lives.  But mostly for their parents. J

Monday, February 8, 2016

Writing Prompt: Make A Fast List of Favorite Things About a Friend

Favorite Things about a Friend
1.     She’s an introvert.  This means when she lets you in and tells you things, it’s special.
2.    She’s an introvert, and yet, she was the person to make the first friendship move.
3.    She can make a single-serving bag of M&Ms last a week.
4.    She’s the most patient person I know.
5.    You can eat in her car, as long as you don’t drop French fries.  Cold, stale French fries gross her out.
6.    I think my youngest daughter would move in with her if given the chance.
7.    She despises spiders.  So much that I think her bug man might be on her Christmas card list.
8.    She’s up for nearly whatever—like loading up four kids and driving all night to Chicago to stay with friends for a weekend in their 1 bedroom apartment in Evanston.  And she’s good with detouring to try to find the Amana Colonies on the way home.
9.    She knows my kids’ favorite—everything.
10.   She introduced me to coffee.
11.    She liked me even before I drank coffee.
12.   She adores kid cereal.  Her cabinets are full of boxes of Lucky Charms, Reese’s Puffs, Capt’n Crunch Holiday Blend.
13.   She hates cantaloupe, green peppers and most sausage.  I get the sausage.
14.   Her hair always looks perfect.  Even when it’s just in a ponytail. 
15.   She introduced my daughters to sushi. 
16.   Carmex will never have a sales problem as long as she’s around.
17.   There is lotion in every room of her house. 
18.   Her favorite kind of pizza is plain cheese.
19.   We don’t talk about God as much as we should, but I suspect she’s the friend who prays for me the most. 
20.  She is a peacemaker.
21.   She’s tidy, but not a neat freak.
22.  For example, before kids, her car always looked like it had just been driven off of the showroom floor.  Now it looks perfect for transporting a preschooler. 
23.  I’m no longer sure how many books on my bookshelf actually belong to her or how many books on her bookshelf actually belong to me.
24.  When we lived in the same town, she would have a birthday date with each one of my four children.
25.  She was the only person besides Brian and me who knew the sex of our last baby before she was born.
26.  She has the best sense of humor—just edgy enough to be real—but never crossing the line into too mean or too crass.
27.  In all the years I’ve known her, I think I’ve only seen her truly angry twice.  I’m not sure what that means, but boy.  It’s something I really admire.
28.  She got a dog. Not because she wanted one.  Because her daughter and husband wanted one. 
29.  Her normal circadian rhythm is to stay up late and sleep in.
30.  She dislikes flying and yet she’s boarded a plane no less than three times in the three years we’ve lived here to come visit.  Twice with a toddler.
31.  I love her daughter like she's related to me by blood.

32.   Even though there’s a wacky time-zone issue, and work schedules, and family commitments, and so I don’t get to, she’s the one person besides people to whom I’m related whose voice I want to hear every day. 

Sunday, February 7, 2016

I Want to Start Writing Again...

But I think I've lost my voice.

But I feel like I have nothing to say.

I want to write about parenting teenagers, yet I'm not willing to be that vulnerable or more importantly, make my kids that vulnerable at this point.

I want to write about my experiences in California, but it no longer feels comfortable to sarcastically complain about it, yet I don't have a deep love either.  So everything I attempt comes out flat.

I'm back in the classroom on a daily basis after years of virtual school teaching.  It's amazing.  And it's not time yet for that story.

Occasionally I have these flashes of inspiration, but they happen at the most inopportune times.  When I'm in the shower.  Driving on the interstate (I don't think I'll ever call it a freeway).  In the middle of a conversation with someone.

And by the time I actually sit down at the computer (If I was fortunate enough to remember what it was I was going to write about in the first place) my thoughts are a mad jumble that I cannot organize to save my life.

Not writing makes me sort of sad.  And I've replaced it with binge-watching Bones and re-binge-watching Gilmore Girls on Netflix.  And that's not sort of sad.  That's really sad.

So I joined this writing group for February.  500 words per day.  It's Feb. 8 and I've only written a little over 1,000 so far.

Anyone who knows me knows that my superpower is making a short story long, so the fact that I'm this far in the hole means something's off.

I bought a book three years ago by Sark called Juicy Pens, Thirsty Paper:  Gifting the World with Your Words and Stories and Creating the Time and Energy to Actually Do It.

I don't know about gifting the world.  I do know that writing's been a form of cheap therapy for me over the years.  But the time and energy thing?  I'd like some of that.

My plan...until I'm inspired otherwise...is to start on page one of this book and diligently work through the writing prompts with a goal of 500 words for each.  I feel like I'm seventeen again, enrolled in EN101--Beginning Composition.

I'm going to post them here.  Mostly so I don't lose them.

And maybe I'll find my voice.