Eddie and I were both lucky enough to be raised in loving homes with good parents who made very intentional choices. We are making a lot of the same choices as we parent our kids, but I’m not sure some of these things would even be on my radar as a mom if it hadn’t been for the way we were raised. In no particular order, these are some of the things I remember from my own childhood that I have or will try to apply to my parenting.
1. There is no clean plate rule. Obesity is a problem on both sides of my family. My mom was always very insistent that we learned that when we were no longer hungry it was time to stop eating. If that means there are still a few string beans left on the plate, that’s fine. Our kids aren’t required to clean their plates either. They aren’t picky eaters, but they don’t always eat in large quantities. Kids tend to go through phases anyway, if one of them is going through a growth spurt, they might eat 2 or 3 helpings of something, but there will also be times when they barely touch the food on their plate. We eat dinner only about an hour or so before they go to bed, so there is no snack and they know dinner is their last chance to eat for the day. If they haven’t touched it, sometimes I will wrap it up and it will be their lunch the next day. It isn’t wasteful and there is no guilt associated with not eating what mommy worked hard to cook, etc.
2. Steer clear of food as comfort or reward. Again with the food theme, and again this comes from my mom. When we were little we were not allowed to have food after we got hurt. She didn’t want us to associate food with making us feel better. Instead of a lollipop after a shot at the doctor’s office, she would ask if there were stickers or a prize bin instead. If we scraped our knee at my Mommom’s house and Mommom wanted to give us an ice cream cone to cheer us up, my mom said that sounded like a great idea for after dinner, but maybe right now we could sit together and read a story. I’m not actually as good about this as I’d like to be. I do give in to the lollipops after the shots, but we use stickers as rewards for going to the potty instead of M&Ms. It’s more of a guideline for me, but for my mom, it was definitely an important rule.
3. Individual time with each child. My dad traveled a lot for work when we were little, but once a year we each got our own weekend with him. He would take us anywhere we wanted to go and the only rule was that we had to be able to drive there in one day. One year I chose Niagara Falls and the next year I chose Colonial Williamsburg. My sister chose Lancaster, PA once and copied my Niagara Falls idea the following year. We haven’t done anything quite so elaborate yet, but we do try to make sure to get some quality time with each child doing something they enjoy as often as possible. Eddie might take Nicholas to the driving range, for example.
4. The right to privacy and personal space. My mom was very big on this. She always wanted us to have our own rooms and she left our stuff alone. I remember once my sister read my diary and there was something in it that would have gotten me in big trouble. I really don’t remember what it was, but I remember being terrified that my sister had found out and her delight as she told mom that she had read it. My mom stopped her mid-sentence and then my sister got in trouble for reading my diary. I didn’t get in trouble at all. I have no idea if she snooped around later to find out what it was (I probably would have) but to this day my mom insists that she never read my journals. I hope I have that kind of discipline when my kids are teenagers.
5. The value of an education. Eddie and I both come from families where it was just assumed that we would do well in school and go to college. Once I got a C (an 83 average was a C at our school) in French class and I was grounded until I brought it up to an A, which I was able to do fairly quickly. It was made very clear to me that I was only in trouble because I was obviously slacking off and I was capable of much more than that. If I had been putting forth my best effort and my best was a C, it would have been celebrated instead of punished. Apparently, it worked because I went to college on a full academic scholarship and graduated early. Setting my kids up to be as academically successful as they are able is important to me. You can read more about that and why we decided we needed to keep Nicholas at home if you click on my homeschool tab.
6. The ability to make your own choices. I wasn’t allowed to pierce my ears until I was in middle school, and there was one time (also in middle school) when my dad refused to let me buy a Tupac Shakur t-shirt on the grounds that his teenage daughter was not walking around with a picture of a convicted sex offender on her chest, but other than that we were pretty much allowed to wear whatever we wanted. Sometimes I would sneak a midriff top into my purse and change in the bathroom at the mall after my mom dropped me off. I confessed to that recently and my mom was all, “I already knew that. Do you really think I let you and your friends walk around unsupervised for hours? I was always following a store or two behind you.” hmmm…apparently my parents figured as a teenager I needed some kind of rebellion and that seemed fairly harmless, so they let me have it. We were not allowed to do anything permanent that we might have regretted as adults (no teenage tattoos) or anything that could alter the perception of a potential employer or college admissions counselor in an interview (no face piercings), but I was allowed to dye my hair and wear whatever I wanted. It probably helped that we went with a school that had a dress code that didn’t really allow for crazy hair colors anyway. I know this is going to be hard for me as a parent, but I remember that it meant a lot to me as a teenager to be able to make my own decisions about my body. If Abby wants to dye her naturally blonde Goldilocks curls when she’s a teenager I am going to die inside, but it might be important to let her do it.
7. Religion is important. God was integrated into every aspect of our lives going to Catholic school and church and spending summer vacations going to Bible school. We said grace before meals and bedtime prayers and were taught to say a Hail Mary every time we heard a siren. We were also taught what other religions and cultures believe. Both of my parents have always been very firm believers in collecting knowledge from every possible source. (I pity the fool who tries to take on either one of them in Trivial Pursuit)
8. Give children as many life experiences as possible. There’s all that talk about building schemas, and I don’t know if they did this deliberately or they just enjoyed some peace and quiet while we were away, but as long as we could afford it, my parents let us participate in as many new experiences as we were offered. Can my grandmother fly my 12-year-old self and my 8-year-old sister to Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon? Yes. (I’m pretty sure Charlotte came back as the only third grader who had spent her summer vacation at the MGM Grand.) Can she also take us to a Native American pow-wow? Sure. Bus trip with the senior citizens to Strawberry Festival? Why not. Can I go camping in Canada with Lauren’s family? Yes. Can I go on the school trip to France? Yes. My sister loved soccer and played for years and years, eventually getting really good at it. I, on the other hand, liked to bounce around trying lots of different things. Sewing lessons? Yes. Girl Scouts? Yes. Dance? Yes. Gymnastics? Yes. Softball? Yes. Volleyball? Cheerleading? Tennis? Once I signed up for something I had to commit to the whole season or session, but after that, if I wanted to move on to another interest that was fine. I do wish I would have stuck with one thing long enough to be an expert, but I like that I got to be involved in all of those different things.
9. Be willing to break your own rule and treat each child differently. Every child is different and they need to be parented differently. I just told you that my sister and I weren’t allowed to quit a sport in the middle of the season, but we have a much-younger brother and my parents did let him quit once. He was in the second grade and playing on the school soccer team. In the first game of the season, his team lost and he cried hysterically. The next week his team won, but he still cried hysterically. When we asked what was wrong he said that he felt so bad that the other team had to lose. He was hypersensitive to the fact that there was always going to be a winner and a loser. It broke his heart every time he had to play. He felt horrible not only for himself, but carried the weight of the loss for his whole team if they lost, and the weight of the loss for the other team if his team won. He was 100% miserable, so they let him quit. He’s just not into team sports. I’m sure my dad would have loved his only son to be the athlete in the family, but that’s just not the way my brother is made. No one is trying to force him to change that part of himself.
10. No labels allowed. There is no such thing as a bad child. It was always, “Hitting is bad.” or “Biting is bad.” Never, ever, ever, “You are bad.” Always, “That noise you are making is annoying.” Never, “You are so annoying.” Interestingly enough, my mom also refused to tell me I was pretty. I heard it a lot from other people, but I did notice and I asked her about it once. She said she wanted me to have more intrinsic value than that. Don’t place your self-worth on being pretty, even if you are, because one day you will be old and wrinkly or you might get disfigured in a car accident. You will still be the same person, you will still be you even if you are no longer “pretty.” She wouldn’t say, “You are pretty,” because I was more than that. It wasn’t until I had Abby that I understood. Now it actually annoys me that 4 or 5 times a day strangers will tell her she is so pretty, but no one ever says anything else about her. They like what they see, but they have no idea who they see.
(BONUS) 11. Generosity and spreading the wealth. We didn’t have a lot of money when I was little, but when I was a teenager my dad’s career really took off, and eventually, we became pretty wealthy. The funny thing was that my parents’ lifestyle didn’t really change all that much. We stayed in the same school and they had the same friends and did the same activities they always had. We did eventually move out of the condo where we had been living and into a single-family house on the water, which had always been my dad’s dream, and they had nicer cars, but that was about it. My dad was always open to the idea of sharing money with anyone and everyone, often to a fault. Eventually, it would be one of the main reasons my parents got divorced (financial infidelity). I did learn, however, that if you are financially blessed, it is important to share that blessing with people who aren’t. It isn’t at all unusual for me to hear stories about how my parents paid someone’s tuition or helped a single mom get through a rough divorce, or gave someone a start-up seed for their business. Even before there was a lot of money, they would make sure to take whatever blessings we had and pass them on to other families.
I remember after I made my First Communion my mom donated my fancy white dress to the church. The church hadn’t asked for any dresses as far as I knew and all of my friends got to keep their special dresses. I thought keeping my dress was a no-brainer because I had a little sister who would need it in a few years. My 7-year-old self was perturbed until a few weeks later when we got a letter that read something like this: Thank you so much to whoever donated the First Holy Communion dress. I have not been able to afford one and they are not usually available in thrift shops either. Because of you, my daughter has finally been able to receive her communion! Even though I was still annoyed that some other girl got to keep the dress, I was happy that Jesus was alive in another little girl because my parents made me share my dress.
I’m sure there are plenty of other things I learned (like general life skills. You wouldn’t believe how many 20-somethings I met in college who didn’t know how to write a check or do a load of laundry) and there are a lot of things Eddie learned from his family, most notably the value of hard work and earning your keep, that we will want to work to instill in our kids as well. What are some of the values that you learned from your parents that you want to make sure you are deliberately teaching your children?
Looking for more parenting tips? Here are the 5 best pieces of advice I’ve learned from other moms.
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