In reading some of the comments to my Crap Parents blog post
(Thank You!), a few parenting stories of my own have popped back into my
head. I’ll admit that the memories are
somewhat bittersweet, as I no longer have contact with the step kids I grew to
love as my own. Distance and a
vindictive ex-wife, unfortunately, were enough to seal that fate.
Anyway, I thought I’d share some real world examples of my
own on how not being afraid to be a hard ass as a parent, can be a good
thing. Both stories involve my
step-daughter; the one with screaming ADHD and resulting impulse control
issues. Keep in mind, particularly for
the second story, that I was known as the hard ass of the two parental figures
in her life.
One Saturday afternoon, I was alone in the house with my daughter. She was planning to head to a music festival
and was eagerly waiting for one of her friends to pick her up. I knew she was excited about the concert,
having mentioned it several times during the previous week. At some point, my attention was drawn to
noise coming from the street / cul de sac in front of our home. Looking out, I saw a worn out Chrysler
minivan attempting to do donuts. I
called up to my daughter and asked if that was her friend. She said that wasn’t his car to which I
responded that it had better not be because there was no way my daughter, step
or otherwise, was riding with that idiot.
I was also pretty angry because we lived in a rather nice neighborhood;
yes, part of it was being a snob but a larger part was because there were small
children present.
The next thing I knew, you guessed it, the minivan pulled
into our driveway and honked the horn. I
reminded my daughter of the time honored father’s code of ‘if you honk your
horn in my driveway, you’d better be dropping off a package because you ain’t
picking up my daughter’, and made it very clear she was not riding with this
moron. She was not so happy but said
she’d tell her friend she wasn’t going.
The next thing I know, the aforementioned friends (another friend had tagged
along) were on my back deck, where I was smoking a cigar (still not sure what I
ever saw in those things). In a
respectful tone, he asked why I wouldn’t allow my daughter to go with him. After I laid out the reasons, he proceeded to
explain to me why I was wrong. To this
day, I’m quite proud of myself for not having two bodies to bury in the back
yard. However, after about two minutes
of discourse between the two of us, I informed him his departure would be a
wise move. A strange teenager telling a
man he was dumb in his own home is tantamount to asking to have the living
daylights beaten out of him.
Numb nuts finally left and my daughter sequestered herself
into her room. Much as I wanted to just
let things lie, I decided a good father would chat with his daughter about the
event. Knowing how much she was looking
forward to the concert, I knew I’d be facing the untamed wrath of a teenage
girl. I knocked on her door and walked
in.
Before I even got two words out of my mouth, my daughter
jumped up and threw her arms around me.
With tears in her eyes, she told me how grateful she was to have me as
her dad. That she’d never had anyone she
could count on to protect her until I came along. To say I was shocked would be an understatement. That moment still brings a tear to my eyes.
The other story I’d like to share happened about six months
after their mother and I separated. I
was chatting with my step daughter and she told me how much she missed me. She said that she missed the structure I
brought as a parent. This shocked me a
bit and I jokingly reminded her of her and her brother’s comments about my
being the hard ass parent. And then she said
something I’ll never forget, so long as I live.
‘You were firm, but you were fair, and we always knew you loved
us.’ Wow, pretty powerful stuff, at
least for me.
Beyond recounting seemingly self-serving stories, my point
is that kids need a healthy, repeat healthy, structure during their formative
years. Regardless of how much they fight
it sometimes, they crave structure; they appreciate it. Honestly, it’s sometimes easier to let things
slide. You think ‘I just don’t feel like
dealing with the drama right now. I’ll
deal with it later.’ If you’re not
prepared to enforce your rules, then don’t set them.
At the risk of going into full babble mode, I’ll share one
more story. I was with a female friend
recently. Her son had his three cousins
staying with her for a few nights over the holidays, so there were four
pre-teen boys in the house. They were
typical rambunctious kids and a lot of fun.
At 8:45 pm, she announced that lights out would be at 9:00. 9:00 came and went with no effect on the
mayhem upstairs. At 9:15, I reminded her
of her lights out time. She responded
that they were just being boys and I shouldn’t be such a hard ass. She completely missed the point! I had no issue with the boys having fun. What I had an issue with was her drawing a
line in the sand and walking away from it.
You might read this and think I ran my home like Army basic
training. You’d be wrong. I didn’t have rules for everything; trust me,
I’ve seen the damage that can do to kids.
Rules and limits were in place where it made sense. When rules were broken, there were
consequences commensurate with the importance of the rule. Those consequences were consistent and
uniformly enforced.
