Mommy Adventures: The Rules

I had a long talk with my son last night about the rules his dad and I have for him. I admit, we are more strict on him than on our daughter ‘cuz, you know, according to the Gaelic proverb, A son is a son until he comes of age. A daughter is a daughter all her life. And we want him to “come of age” and not be a boy forever, no matter how I sometimes wish he could just be my “son” for the rest of my life.

Anyway, Captain Awesome spent the day with his Auntie B yesterday and I found out that he asked Ms B to buy him Lays. I don’t buy junk food for my children, except when we go on movie dates and/or when we have a party at home. Looks like my son felt some sort of freedom when I wasn’t around. I talked to him specifically about the junk food issue for a while and asked him if he understood why I was making a big deal out of it. He said, yes, you only want us to be healthy. I’m glad he got that down. Now, onto the bigger issue: following the rules.

No kid is perfect. No matter how much we try our best as parents, we’re bound to mess them up in our own little way. That’s one huge chunk of an ingredient in building a character. So, if you hear a mother say that her daughter never throws tantrums, you can only assume that (a) she’s lying; or (b) her daughter has serious mental/emotional problems.

So, the rules. The great thing about Captain Awesome is that he’s very easy to converse with. He’s highly analytical and he listens intently when you’re talking about something serious (or something he’s very interested in). So, talking about the importance of following rules and its implications was, well, not entirely easy, but not difficult difficult.  I started by asking him about laws, and if he knows what they are and why we follow them. His saying yes to this starter saved me a lot of explanation, obviously, and so I went on and ask him if we only follow the law if a policeman is around. He said no; and then he understood where I was driving at. This conversation got deeper than I expected. At some point, we related the following rules conversation to gaining his parents’ trust using the-boy-who-cried-wolf analogy, i.e. if you’re caught not following our rules two times, on the third time you did, but looked as if you didn’t, do you think we’ll believe you? It got deeper to other examples. Like if he gets into fights in school and he would tell us that he didn’t start it, if we know that he’s been lying to us, how can we support and fight for him? See, I know there are those parents who defend their children all the time – right or wrong. That’s sweet and all, and although I want my children to know that I got their back, I also want them to learn accountability for their own actions. I told him that, too.

Going back to the rules…I explained what they are for. I told him that the rules we set on him and Little HRH are more like a training method on developing discipline, how they should live their day-to-day lives and help them build their individual characters rather than to restrict them just because. He understood.

Of course, there are rules that are going to be broken again in the future. More when they become teenagers. But I hope the lesson will stick hard enough that they grow up not WANTING to break bigger rules – taking advantage of people, gaining advancement at the expense of other people, cheating on their girlfriend/boyfriend/wife/husband, fraud, perjury, etc.

I know, I know. I think too far ahead.

P.S.

We concluded the junk food issue with me allowing them to have junk food once a week and when we have parties.