Decisions and Demands

We’re having our living room carpet torn out today. It’s old and worn and very stained and I’m tired of dealing with it. So we’re putting in laminate. It seemed like a no brainer, so I was surprised to find my youngest laying on the floor last night, weeping about how much she’s going to miss it. I gotta admit, I did not have that one on my parenting BINGO card.

I like that they can express their opinions, but I spend a lot of time trying to reflect back to them the realities that they’re expressing. Yesterday, one of my daughters was lamenting that Forrest and I don’t push them into more activities. We don’t. They’re required to fulfill any commitments they make, but once the sports season is over, if they want to quit, they can quit. She was saying that she wished we made her do more things, that we overrode her objections and decided what was best for her. It would be so much easier for her, if we would just make her do things whether or not she wanted to.

Whew. She’s not wrong, of course. With my willpower and Forrest’s energy, we could have forced our kids to become all sorts of amazing things. They could be well on their way to sports scholarships or national math competitions. I have no doubt of that.

But we only pull out the parental dictatorship when it comes to school, chores and health. Everything else is a choice. It’s hard to hear my child push back on our values in this way. But as we talked, I helped her to see that in our family, we believe helping kids learn how to make good decisions is our number one priority. And most of learning to make good decisions is making bad decisions.

I want my kids to experience lots of regret for their childhood choices. That sounds awful, but hear me out. I want them to splurge on the stupid plastic toy and regret the purchase. I want them to refuse to do their chores and regret the cancelled outing. I want them to procrastinate studying for the test and regret the bad grade. I want them to quit a sport in a fit of pique and regret missing out.

Because when they’re a grown up, I don’t want them to do things they’ll regret. They will, of course, we all do. But it’s a lot easier to deal with the regret from a failed test in 5th grade than a failed project in their first job. I want them to get as many bad choices out of the way as possible.

So, no, I don’t make them do things they don’t want to. I don’t substitute my judgment for theirs unless I really, really have to. It’s all a gamble, I know that, and I worry that we’re emphasizing the wrong things. I worry that they’ll take away the wrong lessons or that the regret from a bad decision will turn to resentment. I worry that they’ll hit 35 and wish that I had forced them to go outside and play catch in the rain even though they complained.

But I tell myself that they can use those beautiful logical brains to make new choices too. I hope they’ll learn from my mistakes and see how even a full-grown woman can stop, take stock of where she is, and change her mind. I hope against hope that they will see all of the times Forrest and I screwed up and realize that there are very few irredeemable choices. There’s always time to take up a new career, let alone a new hobby.

I think that we’re often given the message that life is short so we should take advantage of it. But if I had one thing I wish to express, it’s that life is long. There are so many chances to reinvent ourselves. We do not have to pack everything into childhood or adolescence. And there are so many years to learn and grow.

Maybe they’ll disagree. Maybe in a decade they’ll come home from college and tell me all the things I did wrong. In fact, they definitely will. And then, I can only hope that we all find a way to stop, take stock of where we are, and move in a new direction again.