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juliecinci
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| Posted: Aug 18 2005 at 8:47am | IP Logged
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In the teen thread about learning to talk with teens, it's come up a couple times that some moms were wild in high school and the implication is that sometimes it was due to lenience on the part of the parents.
In my family, my parents were classicly permissive. They didn't set rules or curfews, they were tolerant of our musical tastes and choices, and they didn't spend much time lecturing at all.
Of the three kids, I was a good girl all the way through high school and college. I spent the first year of college testing the waters of drinking at parties, but got over that pretty quickly. Other than that, i was a virgin when I got married and I have never ever used any drugs or any kind. I got good grades and had strong values about how to treat other people, etc. This all without parents who were practicing their faith at all and who were divorcing each other as I left home for college.
My siblings, otoh, made choices that they regret today and got into trouble in relationships and with drugs and alcohol during their late teens and early twenties. Today, both are successful adults with values and my sister is a believer and homeschooler.
I don't think permissiveness produces immoral kids. I think lack of parental love and involvement will cause some kids to look for what they don't get at home other places.
Also, in a study that Ross Campbell cites in his book How to Really Love Your Teen (great book, btw), he shows that families who are authoritarian - that is, who use top down rigidity to control their children's lives tend to produce the most rebellious kids of all.
We have seen this time and again with the homsechool families we know. Those who are the most rigid have kids who are hiding their "illegal" behavior from their parents.
So as I thought about this conversation where teens are choosing values or lifestyles that conflict with parental values and lifestyles, it seems that the goal has to be something other than the values and lifestyles. We can't make the goal conforming.
But that doesn't mean we give up and disappear either.
It seems like it would make more sense to be a detective, to get into discovery mode to see what makes this teen tick. There's a reason someone in a family with certain values will choose different ones... and the reason has to be that he is getting something from this exploration, from the music, from the interest in X that means something to him.
The authoritarian will clamp down and eliminate siad thing thinking the problem has been eliminated. The permissive parent will ignore it and hope it goes away. I'm hoping that in our house, we'll get to know the kid - that we'll be interested (not just fearful) and discover why there is resonance for him in stuff that I rejected.
What do you think?
Julie
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Julie
Homeschooling five for fourteen years
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tovlo4801
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| Posted: Aug 18 2005 at 10:19am | IP Logged
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Julie,
You always have the most thought provoking questions! All the discussions with you have made me a convert to your way of thinking. 
I had a pretty permissive parent and made many mistakes, but also found my way out of the mess (with a few scars, but in better shape than many). I've never considered it, but the one thing I always knew was that my parents loved me.
In truth, I'm not sure that my dad (who I lived with after the divorce) was really the detective-type, involved parent that you describe. As an adult I can see that he was caught up in his own concerns and unfortunately too often let me go astray or even more unfortunately encouraged me in my wrong paths. Yet, I have NEVER doubted his love for me. I can't even put in words how I knew he loved me, except that he told me so frequently and you could see it in his body language and hear it in his voice whenever he did.
He also sacrificed for us. He might have spoiled and indulged us, but we knew that even the simple things that we were given were given to us at a sacrifice to himself. He never talked about it, but we knew. We knew that a piece of antique furniture was sold about the time college tuition was due. We knew that money was tight and he still bought an old beat-up car for a 16th birthday. Again, it might have been spoiling, but I think the quiet, loving sacrifice spoke volumes.
Maybe that's part of the equation too. There certainly was selfishness in my dad's parenting. He was perhaps far too involved in his own conerns, leaving him unable to really be involved in any significant way with us. If he had added the aspect of the involved, detective parent perhaps my brother and I would suffer fewer scars now. I've always wondered how both my brother and I managed to come through the ugliness of our younger years as strong as we are. It's always been a mystery to us (and to our parents too  ), but perhaps it was our parents love that carried us through to the other side.
Maybe the ideal formula, is true love that shines through quietly in words and actions, quiet sacrifice that is done freely and without asking anything in return, and caring involvement that guides, but doesn't take over.
Just thinking out loud, but it always helps me to think through these questions. Thanks for asking it Julie!
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juliecinci
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| Posted: Aug 19 2005 at 8:27am | IP Logged
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tovlo4801 wrote:
Julie,
You always have the most thought provoking questions! All the discussions with you have made me a convert to your way of thinking. |
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Oh no! Pressure. 
tovlo4801 wrote:
| I had a pretty permissive parent and made many mistakes, but also found my way out of the mess (with a few scars, but in better shape than many). I've never considered it, but the one thing I always knew was that my parents loved me. |
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That has to be the key, doesn't it?
tovlo4801 wrote:
| In truth, I'm not sure that my dad (who I lived with after the divorce) was really the detective-type, involved parent that you describe. As an adult I can see that he was caught up in his own concerns and unfortunately too often let me go astray or even more unfortunately encouraged me in my wrong paths. Yet, I have NEVER doubted his love for me. |
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This is the same for me. I lived with my mom and she was the same.
tovlo4801 wrote:
| I can't even put in words how I knew he loved me, except that he told me so frequently and you could see it in his body language and hear it in his voice whenever he did. |
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What a neat image you express here.
tovlo4801 wrote:
| He also sacrificed for us. He might have spoiled and indulged us, but we knew that even the simple things that we were given were given to us at a sacrifice to himself. He never talked about it, but we knew. We knew that a piece of antique furniture was sold about the time college tuition was due. We knew that money was tight and he still bought an old beat-up car for a 16th birthday. Again, it might have been spoiling, but I think the quiet, loving sacrifice spoke volumes. |
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That is such a sweet paragraph! I always wonder what my kids will remember. What will they look back on and say spoke love?
Ross Campbell says that it's not enough to just love our kids. They have to experience what we do for them as love. If we have love in our heearts but they don't experience it as love, then it's not love, for them. They can't use it or feel it or know it in the way that love helps them.
I try to think about that sometimes.
tovlo4801 wrote:
| Maybe that's part of the equation too. There certainly was selfishness in my dad's parenting. He was perhaps far too involved in his own conerns, leaving him unable to really be involved in any significant way with us. If he had added the aspect of the involved, detective parent perhaps my brother and I would suffer fewer scars now. |
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That is so well said. This is exactly how I've felt about my mom. She's done a ton to repair those years so these are no longer issues for us. But at the time, if she could have managed being more involved in my life and less in her problems (which given the scope of the problems I'mm sure was not possible), it would have helped me and my siblings a lot.
tovlo4801 wrote:
| Maybe the ideal formula, is true love that shines through quietly in words and actions, quiet sacrifice that is done freely and without asking anything in return, and caring involvement that guides, but doesn't take over. |
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Wow. This is beautiful! I like it.
Julie
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Julie
Homeschooling five for fourteen years
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Willa
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| Posted: Aug 19 2005 at 11:26am | IP Logged
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My parents were strict when my brother and I were younger. They loosened up quite a bit when I was a teenager. Interestingly, I rebelled and so did my brother to some extent. My younger brother, who was brought up in a more relaxed environment throughout, DIDN'T really rebel and is a good person, pastor etc.... my other brother and I both straightened up as adults and are now good citizens and all, but I know I worried my parents for a while.
I feel now that they were TOO permissive when I was a teenager -- my mother shared that she thought it would drive me even further away and maybe it would have. I was miserably unhappy, questioning my faith, sinnning etc. I find that teenagers really want to hear what their parents think, even when on the surface they are arguing and resisting. I know I did. I didn't want lectures but I did want to see beneath the surface to what was REALLY going on. I would have wanted my mom to tell me WHY she didn't like the Rolling Stones rather than just coming in and switching off the TV -- that just made me mad!
I knew my parents loved me and that's probably what got me through as I mentioned. They were loyal and steadfast through lots of inconvenience. They gave me that base of care and commitment. Also, at a low point my mom told me to say a prayer and that literally in the long run turned my whole life around. You probably don't KNOW as a parent what may turn the key with your troubled kid and that's why it's important to just keep trying, patiently and painfully and hopefully ....
I am sort of on the passive side of the parenting spectrum -- I really have to watch myself so I don't let too much go and especially, just drift through my own life and not connect with the kids. My DH has the same issue. We can work hard on our own things but we are not good at juggling lots of plates, so lots of things get by us. We have a plugged bathroom sink that's been there for several days while our life continues to trot on rapidly -- DH sick, ds 12 at daily football practice 20 miles away, driving ds 19 off to college 250 miles away!
My own kids are not really rebellious at all. Obviously we don't know for sure until they are grown. My present toddler could give us a run for our money if he keeps in his present path
The Ross Campbell book (I read the one targeted to children, not teens) was really helpful to me in presenting the concept of the "emotional tanks". The analogy is that kids can't run on an empty emotional tank anymore than their bodies can run without food. Positive interactions build reserves but negative interactions deplete them. This analogy helps me to remember to measure my interactions with my kids and not "push" too much when our relationship is already a bit tense.
I DO read about strict parents who raise "wild" kids but I also read about permissive parents who raised wild kids. A lot of people have shared with me that their upbringing was chaotic and that resulted in a sort of "dog eat dog" society in their homes. So I keep vigilant for those sibling injustices and cases where the "good kid" ends up doing the work that the other kids SHOULD be doing.
It certainly is a balance and I think it's complicated by the fact that we have different temperaments, different styles and different approaches to relationships. When strict, severe parent X recommends loosening up from her own life experience, permissive parent Y may take that as permission to sit around and eat chocolates all day while her kids slug it out -- you know what I mean. And vice versa of course!
It helps me to remember that parenting IS at core a relationship; you don't want to be a buddy to your teens per se but you do want to have a respectful, cooperative relationship with them as much as possible -- they need that role model of making a relationship "work" even in the tough times.
That was another little analogy that helped me that I read in an unschooling magazine many years ago. That your kids are like guests in your house and you should set standards but be kind and polite about it. CS Lewis says something quite similar -- that so often, family members are much pleasanter to strangers than they are to their closest intimates, their own family -- really, it should be the other way around, shouldn't it? And I do think teens are especially in need of that kind of courtesy.
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Willa
hsing boys ages 11, 14, almost 18 (+ 4 homeschool grads ages 20 to 27)
Take Up and Read
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Leonie
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| Posted: Aug 19 2005 at 8:43pm | IP Logged
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I find it's all a matter of balance - balancing my temperament and experiences with that of my dh and my teens and our beliefs as Catholics.
I was not raised Catholic but in a permissive home - no rules or curfews and so on. But I grew up quite square. And often played the role of mother for my mother, who was/is very different to me, wrt hanging out at night clubs, drugs, drink etc.
Many would look at our home now and think it is permissive, in that we don't have rules.
What we do have, however, are principles and relationship and a sharing of the Faith - and it is those things that set our home apart from the home in which I grew up.
I love my mother but I also acknowledge that I have a different relationship with my sons than the relationship she has or had with my brother and I.
Have I gone off topic again?
Leonie in Sydney
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4Real Forums : Mothering and Family Life
Topic: Wild child or saint?
