Posted in My Kids

You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away, know when to run.
----Kenny Rogers

I don’t know why these are the 1st words that came to my mind when I started thinking about this topic, but they were. So, what is the topic? When to start letting your children make their own mistakes. (When to hold em’, and when to walk away?) My husband and I are having a difference opinion on this one. Yes, you guessed it I have stepped with our oldest son (age 11) where maybe I shouldn’t have. Or should I?

It’s really hard for me to let my kids fail. Part of it is that as the honeschooling Mom I am always there, I see what is going on in their lives. Sometimes the solutions are so obvious to me I just never really think not to say something. But, my husband really challenged me tonight. What he said was simple, "I think your getting too involved. Let him make a mistake, he’ll learn from it." But all my Mommy senses went wild! Let him make a mistake!?? What kind of parent does that?!! (A good one, because my husband is a very good parent. I learn that over and over in watching his dealings with our kids.) But the truth of the matter staying out of "it" and letting him learn from his failures had never occurred to me? Maybe that is a Dad’s way of thinking. I can remember my own Father (Who was also an excellent parent.) saying to me "Well you make the decision, you can always learn from your mistakes." YIKES, I don’t want him to learn from mistakes. I want him to learn from ME!

Recently my cousin died at the age of 46. (She was also my sister-in-law; she was married to my husband’s brother.) It was a very sad time. One of the things that came to mind as I reminisced of all the good times we had shared, was a trip we took when we were young. I mean REALLY young! She was 16, my sister was 14 and I was 11. Somehow we convinced our parents to let the 3 of us take the car and drive 500 miles to visit another cousin 2 States away! It was a great trip and we had a blast. We were good kids (as our parents must have known.) and we didn’t get in any trouble. I have such great memories from that trip. But, here’s the kicker…My son is 11! I don’t even let him go into the grocery store by himself! He has stayed home alone a couple times. (But only if the neighbor is home, they know he’s home, he knows they know he's home, and I’ll be right back! LOL)

Am I too protective? Too involved? Or have times changed? Where my parents just permissive? Maybe this is a side effect of homeschooling. I am with him so much that I just never realized WOW, he’s 11! His friends are of varied ages so I have never really compared what others are allowed to do vs. what he’s allowed to do. Don’t get me wrong, he’s not asking to do things that I am saying no to. He didn’t seem to think I had overstepped my boundaries with the situation that came up today. I think in many ways he was glad to have me be the scapegoat. I got him out of making a hard decision, but now I am wondering if that was the right thing to do? Yes, he may have made the "wrong" decision and had to "learn from his mistake", but in this situation it would not have been the end of the world.

So back to the Kenny Rogers song…I want to hold him, I want to fold him up in my arms and keep him safe. I certainly don’t want to walk way and no matter what happens I will never run! This parenting thing is hard…