Have you ever wondered how you could raise your children to do and believe in something only to find them doing and espousing something different? Have you ever told your child what you expected of them only to hear them rationalizing their behavior based on what their friends or what other parents allow their children to do? Has your child written you a legal brief supporting their behavior even though they have never set foot in law school? Has your child delivered to you what felt like the oral defense of their PhD Dissertation even though they have yet to receive a high school diploma?
Well, if your child is anything like you were as a child, the aforementioned has happened to you a time or two and will no doubt happen a few more times. If you have already experienced the above or even if the described situations have yet to happen, let me be the first to assure you that your time is coming.
In the words of my favorite uncle, “just keep living“. While I’m alerting you to the inevitable, let me take a moment to welcome you to the Wonderful World of Parenting. A world where you know very little about most things that is until your children have children of their own.
Old School Parenting – Father Knows Best?
The type of occurrences that I listed earlier are the types of incidences that might have given you pause. Privately or maybe openly you’ve wondered about your fitness as a parent. Perhaps you have pondered “What am I doing wrong?”, or “What am I missing?”
Chances are that you are probably not doing anything wrong. You most likely aren’t missing anything. And in all likelihood you’ve been doing an exceptional job as a parent. Relax! Take a deep breath. It’s not you at all. You aren’t crazy. It’s your child!
When you start to ask yourself questions about your capacity to parent and your decision-making appears to be on trial, there are dual factors at play. The initial factor is what I refer to as the Universal Rule of Parental Fairness and Justice. I reference the succeeding factor as the Law of Second Hand Smoke. In this post, we are only going to review the Universal Rule of Parental Fairness and Justice. We will examine the Law of Second Hand Smoke in our next post.
The Universal Rule of Parental Fairness and Justice
The Universal Rule of Parental Fairness and Justice is a rule that exists for one reason and one reason only. The Rule persists to make sure that every adult parent gets to consume a good heaping dose of the chronic disappointment, lingering heartache, prolonged disobedience and unrelenting headache you so generously and regularly bestowed upon your parents when you were a child. In other words, the Universal Rule of Parental Fairness and Justice is the universe’s cruel yet fair way of teaching and reminding all those children who later become parents that payback is a large serving of Bee served with generous portion of itch – over and over and over again!
The Rule serves as a reminder, lest you try to forget that none of us walk on water, have ever walked on water nor will we ever walk on water. Further, The Universal Rule of Parental Fairness and Justice is an extension to the Immutable Law of Reciprocity (more on that at another time). Hopefully knowing this helps and convinces you that in spite of your child’s badgering and pessimistic opinion, you are not crazy.
Take comfort realizing what I now recognize, what my parents understood and what my parent’s parents knew before me. Relax knowing that the same thing your “hard headed, know it all, dispute everything” child will likely come to know and understand unequivocally for themselves. “To err is human and to raise a child is to experience many of your childhood errors for the second, third, fourth, fifth… time.”
From Perfect Strangers to Long Lost Friend
Your parents most likely tried to introduce you to the Rule but you didn’t pay them any attention. So when you became a parent and are first introduced to the Rule it is like meeting a perfect stranger. Remember those words “wait until you have children.” Yes, those words. The words that your parents used as a way to introduce you to your future self.
But you couldn’t conceive of a moment in the future when you would be anything like your parents. You couldn’t imagine that one day, you would raise a child who would think they are infallible, immortal, all-knowing…just plain perfect and you are well outmoded, unjust, skeptical…just too damn old and imperfect like your parents.
So the Rule helps us remember lest we forget that we were not always the perfect people we are today. Recently, the Rule helped me remember a time when my parents had an expectation of me that seemed trivial and an affront to my manly independence.
My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
When I was as old as seventeen, I can remember my parents still requiring with some rare exception that I be home when the street lights came on. Home, by the way, meant being in the front of my own home where my parents could look outside the door or window to see me. Home meant in close proximity where my parents need only call my name and I could reply instantaneously.
A seventeen year old being required to be home when it got dark seemed like a harsh and ridiculous request to me. I was a teenager for God’s sake. Everyone else could stay away from the house longer than me. Surely, the few strands of hair on my chest and face counted for something – a couple extra minutes or hours outside the house. My perspective was that I was a good student, I had never been in any trouble so that had to qualify me to be able to stay out later and do it away from the front of my home.
LIFE
On an occasion or two, I attempted to challenge my parent’s governance. My plea for an extended curfew was based either on my lofty opinion of myself or in extolling the virtues of my friend’s wiser more sensible, “better” parents. My parent’s retort to my petition was always the same – “since you want to debate, you can now come in a half-hour earlier” or “since you want to debate, you can go live with your friend’s parents”.
What I heard from my parent’s, most notably my father, might as well have been the same sentence Mississippi Judge F.M. Byrne decreed for Rayford Gibson and Claude Banks – LIFE!
http://youtu.be/1ZO8AEwZAcw
Back then I could have sworn that I was serving a life sentence with Ray and Claude at The Mississippi State Correctional Institution:
- where you lose your freedom,
- where you do hard time,
- there is no escaping from here,
- there is no recreation here,
- there is no fun here
What I didn’t understand then but is crystal clear to me now is that I was far from a prisoner at the Mississippi State Correctional Institution. Moreover, thanks to the Rule I now appreciate fully just how much my parents loved me. They weren’t being cruel, archaic or unfair. They were trying to protect me from the cruelties and experiences that no child should ever be subjected. They were being parents.
They wanted to keep me in close proximity so that they could lessen the chance for me to make the kind of misstep that could land me in the Mississippi State Correctional Institution. They wanted see me grow up and not be a victim of someone who now resides in the Mississippi State Correctional Institution. They wanted me to have a chance live the kind of LIFE that I am living today.
A (Not So) Beautiful Mind
What my infallible, immortal, all-knowing…perfect juvenile mind could not conceive was that the directive to be home when the street lights came home was Fred Sanford code for “you big dummy”.
My parents understood that in the U.S. the greater number of violent crimes, i.e. shootings and homicides, occurred at night after the street lights came on. I grew up in a city that was hailed, more times that I care to admit, as one of the most dangerous places to live in the U.S.
On several occasions, my hometown, the place where I wanted to be free to come and go as I pleased, was designated the U.S. murder capital. One night, my father had personally experienced the unpleasant intentions of criminals in my city. My father’s near death experience and my parent’s overall knowledge of the world I lived in legitimized their desire to keep me close to home when it was dark.
The closer I was to home, the less chance that I could be victimized by someone lurking in the dark. At the time, I thought my parents were just being super strict and overprotective. I’m sure that’s just the way my seventeen year old son – who is living 6,000 miles away from home in a country that has four times the amount of crime as the U.S. – probably feels when I ask him to touch bases with me when he wakes up and before he goes to bed.
Old School Meets New School
What I have only recently realized is that asking my son to touch bases with me is my 2013 way of saying be home when the street lights come on. This request of my son is the only thing that I can currently do to make an effort to check on him the way my folks looked out the windows and door to check on me.
My request is but a token way to do what my parent’s did for me – make sure that I was safe and avoid situations that might lessen my chance of living to my fullest potential. Thirty years later, The Universal Rule of Parental Fairness and Justice has resurfaced yet again to remind me that my parents were just being noble, thoughtful, responsible and compassionate.
My parents only wanted me – like I want for my son – to have a chance to really experience a full life not just an abbreviated life. Quite frankly now that I have experienced being a parent, it is clear that my parent’s also had an ulterior motive to make sure that I lived long enough to be a parent. My parent’s didn’t want anything to happen to me before I got a chance to receive my full heaping serving of the Universal Rule of Parental Fairness and Justice.
Does your child ever think your parenting is too rigid? Do you think your child could have survived growing up as a child in your home?