Parent intentionally, not from convenience

This topic came from your mom - she’s wise.  Although I’m still writing it so it may come across as less wise.  We were talking about some intentional things we did as parents that I think were very positive and she said the pillowable^* quote which is the topic of this post.

Intentional things we did?

- Some time when you were in high school we sat you down and said you no longer had a bedtime.  It was your decision as to when to go to bed.  You still had a curfew, but if you wanted to stay up till morning, that was your decision and you had to live with the consequences – meaning still getting up in time for school, keeping the grades up, etc.

- When you all were in college or shortly thereafter (I think that was the timing), we told you while you would always be our children, since you were adults and on your own (or mostly) and we would continue to give you advice and recommendations / suggestions we thought of you as adults, so you need to make the decisions, and you can take our advice as advice from somebody who loves you and has been around the block a few times.  But the decision you need to make for whatever situation is at hand is your decision.  As opposed to doing what we say because we’re the parents.  That was a good fallback when you were younger.

Some things done from convenience?

- Mom had this one – not letting you all play outside and get dirty all that much as little kids.  Not that you didn’t do it, but you can bet you didn’t do it as much as you probably would have liked because it was just a pain to clean things up after all that fun.

- Cleaning up the kitchen or some other household chore that you didn’t particularly want to do and perhaps didn’t do so well.  When it _needed_ to be done, sometimes it was more convenient for us to do it than to struggle with you to teach you how to do it and learn sometimes you have to do things you don’t particularly enjoy just cause they need to get done.

So, while the above may not be all that earth shattering, the subject line still is and is something to remember - parent intentionally, not conveniently.

^* a quote you could stitch onto a throw pillow