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Child discipline aside -

A great post !

She said if I ground her she was going to call the "Child Abuse Hotline" and report me . . .
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Joe:

The "civil rights for kids" thing has been around a long time. My son came home from kindergarten the first day in 1983 and that was his first lesson. He told me that he could no longer be disciplined or he had the right to call the number.

So, old Dad took the time to explain the "facts of life" as they were lived in the Olson household. I asked if he liked his mother, his sister, and his extended family. He said he did. I asked if he liked his home, his school, and the friends he had. He said he did. I asked if he would be sorry to lose all that. He said he'd be very sad to lose all that.

So I told him that there was more than just calling that number. There would be a time when he would be taken out of our home and placed with strangers while the courts decided if he could come home and that we were fit parents. I also told him that parents had the right to ask the court not to send a child back. He learned the meaning of the word "incorrigible." He also learned that having that label might cause him more grief that he'd cause us by making his phone call.

The long and the short was that old Dad wouldn't have a child back--ever--for one phone call. So I asked him to think long and hard about ever making that move. I told him that strangers might decide to shift him around if they didn't like his behavior or if he called on them.

Then I took him into my lap and explained that parents discipline children because they love them. I told him that I wanted him to be able to develop all his talent and grow into the kind of man that he could be proud of himself being. I told him that parents don't just discipline because of being arbitrary and mean. It's because we know who we are as adults and we know what direction we want our children to grow.

I told him that home is where they keep you because they love, despite what you might do. I told him that loving him was independent of his actions. While we might be disappointed in some action(s), we would never regret him or his just being who he was. We ended by deciding that we'd stick it out as a family.

When his younger sister came home a few years later, having learned the same lesson, he took her aside and gently told her "the facts of life."
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Fast forward to 1994:

One night, driving home from university, my son told me that he valued my opinion more than I gave him credit for. He told me that one of the things he most admired about his father was that he was a man of his word and a man who stuck to and lived his convictions. He told me that he was glad for the way he had been raised and for the disciplined life he had been trained to live and for the example I'd given by walking the walk and not just talking the talk. He told me that he had gotten high praise on his internship for his work and life habits.

We have grown in our relationship. We are now friends and confidants. He does remember the days when I would look him in the eye and say,"I'm your father; I'm not your friend," but understands why.

He now also understands the unconditional love of God the Father. He says he has experienced it at home.

Ditto, his sister.

Both my children have gone from the point of thinking that all parents are killjoys to understanding the whats and the whys and the wherefores. And when people ask what we did to have our children turn out as they have, I tell them first you have to pray for them--from the moment when the doctor says "you're going to have a baby." Then you have to know who you are as an adult: what you believe in, what your limits are, and what you will and will not tolerate. Then you have to be consistent. And it doesn't hurt to go to your kids once in awhile and admit that you were wrong--that you're human and can make mistakes; that the important thing about being an adult or a child is to be big enough to admit when you're wrong. Then tell them that it is impossible for them to do ANYTHING that will cause you to stop loving them.

BOB

Lawrence,

Thanks for such a great post. I can relate to all of it and then some...like we didn't have T.V. (Can you imagine?) :rolleyes: Well, there was radio and paper dolls(before Barbies) and girls' and boys' softball, mumbly peg, and all of those days spent just swimming, or playing Canasta with my girlfriend's mother....and, of course, Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys...


Mary Jo