Tough Love

     As a parent, I fail in too many areas to count, but there is one thing I do understand and execute quite well and that is tough love.  I will henceforth explain.  My kids are not sheltered from reality and by that I mean the subjects that really matter.  For example, my 12 year old and nine year old have known what sex is since they were seven and that was probably too late.  Gasp!  I just thought I would start with the most terrifying subject to start with and navigate from there.  If you are like me and believe that our Lord created it and also that it has been exploited to the nth degree in our society, you would be hard pressed to convince me the conversation was unnecessary.  If they have not heard about it by second grade at school, they have seen some form of it on a phone or lovely x rated commercial or x rated picture that pops up when you are browsing netflix.  I just wanted to let them know what our perfect Lord had to say about it before they heard what the world has to say.  Also, when we talk to our kids about difficult subjects, we are saying, "I have faith that you can handle life."  This is a good thing to remember as a parent when any difficult subject that we feel wholly ill equipped to discuss is launched into our lives and subsequently directly into our laps. 
    On a different subject yet a completely connected one, my husband thinks it is cruel to tell my kids 'when you are 18 you are up and out!'  He is of the vast majority of opinion that kids should be able to live at home pretty much indefinitely.  What he doesn't realize, like majority of society is that saying 'you are entering the world on your own at 18' means 'I believe in you'.  Having our children fall back on us time and time again sends the message that they cannot handle life.  That is like every time your child messes up on their homework, you correcting it all for them before they hand it in and every time they fail, you forcing the teacher to let them do it again and again.  Not handing them their lives and expecting them to live them, is saying that failure teaches us absolutely nothing.  How many quotes have we heard about learning from our failures.  How many of the most successful people in the world have experienced failure and have discussed at length how failure influenced their success  more than their success?  We inhibit our children's failures constantly and we do it when they become adults as well.  We tell them to fail is ok then do everything humanly possible to prevent it.  We try to make everyone the same.  Everyone is a winner.  Everyone deserves a trophy.  Everyone deserves a second chance and a third chance.  Everyone deserves to be on the team no matter how they act or what their grades are.  Everyone deserves to go to college no matter their GPA.  What if preventing our children's failures is robbing them of their life?  What if preventing their failure is robbing them of all their potential?  If people learn more from their failures than their successes and they ultimately attribute their character and their accomplishments to what they learned from failure, then what are we doing?  What kind of damage are we causing?  What kind of success are we stifling?  Next time your kid forgets his homework, do not jump in your car and chase him down to give it to him before the bell rings, let him fail.  Have enough faith in him to let him fail..

And by the way, my children both talk about how excited they are to have their own apartment some day.  My oldest already has ideas on how to decorate and what job he will have to pay for it.  hmmmmm