raising children is really hard...wonderful, rewarding, but hard...especially if you're doing it by yourself...
there are books on the first year, on the terrible twos...you might get a book or two on the middle years...the books start to dwindle with the teenage years, and when it comes to that young adult (that you are still responsible for) the books all but dry up...
I love choclahontas...she's 21 and living on her own...well, she has her own apartment...with a roommate...and her son...
she says she's grown, but she's not...if you've been following my blog you will know that I kinda pushed her out on her ass...I had to...she would have never left otherwise...
but what do you do when you know your kid...newly "grown" kid...is heading for sure disaster...do you stand by and watch the train wreck? do you attempt to intervene? do you just take over?
I'm the first to admit the kid is spoiled...like I told her tonight, you've never had to struggle for anything...but she did have a good upbringing and though she was spoiled she was still taught responsibility... but that shit has gone out the window...I really would let her sink or swim except that I really love my sunshine...
but I know, as a clinician/professor/and just being around kids, that she will grown and change...
but DAMN...I'm tired...
and to think I gotta go through this again with MMB...she is a totally different kid, and the scenario might be different, but the bullshit will be the same...
BTW, she has refused to go to graduation...I wish she would change her mind, but I'm allowing her and teaching her that her word is her bond and that once you speak you have to live up to your words...
I'm very tired...very very tired...so I will write tomorrow or the next day...
In One Week...
9 years ago
4 comments:
You should ask your mother that... what did she do when it was us? When she was scared for you and wondered that you "zigzagged" through life, wondered at why you let that boy sleep in your bed all day and not contribute anything until finally one day Poppy stepped in and put him out, wondered when you would grow up, worried about her children taking on another person's child--did we really know what we were getting ourselves into?
Or you might ask your mother how she felt when Grandma washed her hands of Bigbear, fearing that she was marrying a crazy man, that she was halfway around the world with two small children, that she lived at the end of a dirt road with a skinny black man and no electricity.
You have to let her sink or swim. She'll never make it otherwise. And in the end, she'll be fine... she's not headed for disaster because you raised her pretty well. But she will make mistakes. HUGE ones. But didn't you? I know I did. Major ones. Ones I had to bail myself out of in a hurry. And I survived. And you survived.
And she will survive.
She may not live her life the way you want her to or according to your plan or vision. She's got to make her own mistakes, forge her own way, find her own path. You have to let her do it.
All you can do really is to advise, give support, and pray for the best.
I wrote you this LOOONNNNGGG comment and thought it posted, but just saw that it didn't. I don't think I have the energy to write it all again - so here's the short version.
I wish there was a book, or something for you, because I was just saying to Lilac Blue the other day that parents need to see other people's kids acting crazy so we know that it's not something we did wrong, or something wrong with our kids - sometimes it's just what kids do.
There's a reason so many kids go away to college - so their parents don't have to watch them fuck up.
I was a wreck at 21. So was my mother - and I was 4 years old at the time. Fortunately, she had enough sense to let my father and his parents have me at that time. Because the one clear memory I have of being with her between ages 2 and 5 is of wandering through the apartment she shared with a couple of other Playboy Bunnies the morning after a party and drinking the leftover beer out of cups. And of her and her friends waking up and thinking it was funny that the little 3yo loved the taste of beer so much.
So yeah, 21 year olds mess up. And it's hard as hell to watch them do it. But they have to got through it.
Choclahontas needs to experience her life and live with her consequences. You can't stop it from happening and if you could, she would resent you for it - and rightfully so, because she needs those experiences to grow up and become the adult she already thinks she is.
The hard part is that she has a that yummy little chocolate drop and he will have to live with the consequences of her actions as much as she will. But he has you, and as much as it might drive you crazy sometimes - you are going to be there as much as he needs you.
Well, that wasn't short. But it wasn't as long as the last one. Hopefully, this one will stick.
it never ends, and u said it well HARD WORK and REWARDING
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