I don’t ever in my life wish to assume that being a parent is an easy task. It’s a parent’s responsibility to bring up a tiny infant person and make them into a responsible, flourishing adult some day. They have to keep them safe, they have to teach them right and wrong, and they occasionally have to make them eat their fruits and vegetables.
There are a lot of people that I know, who have come to believe that I cannot possibly have been the easiest child to raise. I’m a very independent person, I keep to myself, I like to do things on my own, and I like to do things my own way. I will jump off the cliff as many times as I possibly can before I go to an instructor and ask if he or she can help me find an easier way down. Naturally, this leads to me making many foolish mistakes, angering some people, and usually doing much more work than I would have had to, had I just asked for help sooner. You can call it pride if you want, but I call it learning. I can honestly say that I have never been arrested, come anywhere close to commiting a federal offense, nor have I done half of the things most kids my age get into. I got a few “C’s in high school. And that is what most of my punishments growing-up were for. In my own personal opnion, I am still college bound, I am still alive, and I’m still a good kid despite all the temptations around me despite a few average grades.
Many a brilliant human being that has worked in careers involving children has, in some form, said “It’s not what we can teach our children, but often what our children can teach us.” As hard as it seems for parents to grasp this context, by age sixteen we really do have full-functioning brains of our own. We are capable, because of our parents, to make good decisions, and decide for ourselves what is best. We do stupid things sometimes knowing they are dumb, but if it’s a choice we want to make, good luck stopping us.
Parents are not supposed to be your friends. I believe that there is a thin line to cross there. Most kids I know want to be able to tell their parents things, but they are afraid of being punished, or being told how to do something, or what they should have done instead. They want to be able to cry on their parents shoulder about a break-up without being told “I told you so,” or given some drawn-out lecture about things they themselves already knew.
“If you knew it was a bad idea, then why did you do it?” This one is my favorite. Oh I don’t know mom and dad, when you broke a lamp playing soccer at age thirteen, I bet hiding it seemed like a good idea to you too. Can you tell me what your reason for throwing out your sisters favorite doll clothes was? I bet your reasons seemed pretty solid to everyone but your parents at the time too.
We will always need our parents. I’m not trying to disclaim differently. They are smarter only because they have truly gone through every same aspect in life we ourselves are coming up to experiencing. And though they only mean to warn you about avoiding the bad stuff and help you with the good, a lot of the time they go about in a completely wrong way of carrying out those good-intended actions.
The battle between parents and teenagers or young adults will always be a constant fight. There are parents that are pushy, that try to live their dreams through their children, that need to have something spectacular to brag to the other parents about, that talk bad about their children, that always push them to be more and do more than they themselves want to do or be. And there children who want to please their parents and will do things they hate just to make them happy, children who will rebel authority, who have their own dreams and are determined to follow them, who let every decision be made for them, or who get into criminal offenses or a bad group of friends despite the words from the wise. There may never be a perfect example of child understanding parents or vise versa, but the key is to decide wisely how much you care about what other’s think of you, be-it that group of moms at the church or your group of friends in school, and how much your decision that others may not approve of mean to you.
I’ve chosen to try my hardest in life at the things I choose to do, despite anyone else’s blessings, and if they truly love and support me, they will cheer me on no matter what those choices happen to be.
