How do you teach your kids—and yourself—responsibility? My successes and failures, resulting in house-elfness.

January 4, 2017trishmercer Leave a comment

Parents, I have a question: when do you show mercy and rescue a child, or when do you let them suffer with an unforgettable lesson?

How do you teach responsibility without potentially damaging your child?

That’s a quandary that plagues me nearly every day. I give you Exhibit A, my youngest daughter, age 9. Yesterday she asked blithely, “Where’s my coat?” as she was getting ready to walk to school in 17-degree weather.

That’s not what a mom wants to hear, that a coat’s missing. “Did you hang it up like you’re supposed to?” I asked, with an appropriate amount of nagging inflection.

“No,” she said, a bit indignant. “I brought it home, all wet, from playing in the snow at my friend’s house yesterday. It’s in that . . . bag . . . right . . . there.” Her voice became very quiet as she realized that house elves don’t work here, and that she hadn’t told me that her soaked coat had spent the night growing colder nowhere near the laundry room.

i-am-not-a-house-elf

Because I was on my way out the door to take my college-aged daughter to catch her bus back to school, I hastily threw the coat into the dryer, set the timer for 25 minutes for when my youngest had to leave, and hoped for the best.

I was torn between hoping her coat would be snuggly warm for her brisk walk to school three blocks away (I usually drive her on mornings like this), and hoping it’d still be a bit wet and cold to teach that girl a lesson in responsibility.

And then I spent the next few hours wondering, What would be the best outcome?

How do you know when to rescue a child from their irresponsibility, and when to let them flounder?

Somewhere along the lines I must have done something right with my oldest daughter, Exhibit B. She is so over-the-top responsible that she’s prepared for every contingency. As a freshman in college, she had an emergency food supply while other students were trying to scavenge pizzas from dumpsters at night, and under her bed she stored dozens of bottles of water, “just in case.” And the girl never ran out of toilet paper.

Growing older has only firmed that. On New Year’s Eve last week, she came up with her two little ones so we could go shopping while grandpa babysat. As she brought in a huge overnight bag, she began to apologize. “I know—we’re staying only a few hours, and the drive is only two hours, but what if the snowstorm comes in early? What if we’re stranded here, or in the car?” She had changes of clothes for all of them, extra bottles and formula for her baby, additional cuppies for her toddler, and snacks.

But I said, “This is what moms do: anticipate disasters. Prepare for the worst. Coming to the rescue for your babies is what you’re supposed to do.”

I was pondering this rescuing attitude as I drove with my middle daughter to her bus stop. At what age should the rescuing stop? Or at least be curtailed to allow the child to find solutions themselves?

My daughter mentioned that two of her roommates had gone back to school the night before and each had texted her with the same message: “I forgot my key. When are you coming back?”

I began to scoff sadly, thinking about those poor, freezing college girls assuming that naturally someone else would be responsible enough to unlock their apartment. Someone else would save them from the predicament they chose not to prepare for . . .

Until I spun around in my seat in the van and asked my daughter, “You have your key, right?”

She smiled smugly. “Of course I do.”

Whew. Thank you, Exhibit C. (By the way, her roommates were rescued by an aunt who lived in the area and brought them to her house for the night, since the apartment mangers were out of town.)

Before I could become too prideful that I’d taught this daughter right as well–at least to remember apartment keys–I remembered that she was the one I accidently left at a Target in Roanoke, Virginia when she was six, and has never let me forget it.

(All of her siblings said she was in the van! I swear it! I went right back again to get her! And I found her with a security guard eating popcorn as she sobbed! How often do I have to apologize for being irresponsible and trusting her four older siblings who swore she was in the vehicle?!)

(She’s also the child who nearly drowned in a high mountain lake when she was 7 without me noticing, and also walked into the deep end of a neighbor’s pool when she was 6, also without me noticing. It’s a miracle she’s made it to 18.)

I realized that this child has been conditioned to expect the worst outcome, to know her mother will be too distracted to realize when she’s in trouble, and that she best take care of herself because mom’s too big of a flake to do so.

So maybe that’s a good thing, letting them flounder in deep, cold water, literally and metaphorically? Look how responsible my middle daughter became because I wasn’t.

(Ok, yeah, that’s a pretty lame argument.)

Now I have to admit that my oldest is so responsible likely not because of anything I taught her, but because we moved around so much when she was growing up, and because I leaned upon her and her sister, only two years younger, so much for assistance. My oldest daughters have become responsible out of necessity.

Survival of the most self-reliant.

So back to my youngest; when I picked up her from school in the afternoon (worried that maybe her coat had been wet, was still wet, and it was only 22 degrees outside and walking home would make her deathly ill, even though I “know” cold weather doesn’t cause a cold because my second daughter who’s a very responsible nursing student will remind me of that fact, every mother knows deep down that yes, cold weather causes colds!), she cheerfully said, “Oh, my coat was toasty warm all the way to school. You should put it in the dryer every morning.”

I didn’t know what to do with that.

Instead of being seen as the kind and thoughtful mother who came up with a solution to make sure she wasn’t cold (rescuing), or my daughter thinking that she should be more accountable and at least tell me when something needs drying and hanging up (teaching responsibility), somehow I’ve been assigned a new task in the mornings of making sure Her Highness’s coat has been adequately warmed in the dryer for half an hour (house-elving).

After being a mom for 26 years, I realize I still don’t know what I’m doing.

How irresponsible of me.

I’m open to your suggestions.

3 ways in which parents are like God (and 3 ways we aren’t–yet)

September 21, 2016September 21, 2016trishmercer 1 Comment

I’ve always known that parenthood is how God teaches us to be like Him, but now that I’ve been at it for 25 years, I feel like I’m finally understanding some of those aspects. For example:

1) God WANTS to hear from us. Wherever, whenever. I know this, because currently our family is spread over the country. Five of my nine children are at home, one’s serving an LDS mission, and three are away at college. My husband also works out of state, so connecting with everyone doesn’t always happen. But on some Mondays (the day my missionary son can email home) I find that I’ve chatted, emailed, skyped, texted, or messaged everyone in my family. Those are successful days when I feel as if everyone’s still connected.

BUT, how I am not like God is that by the evening, I AM DONE! My kids will tell you that there comes a point when I loudly announce, “I do NOT want to TALK or even SEE any more children! I NEED QUIET TIME!”

Invariably this occurs after these children have already been read and prayed away to bed, and they sneak into my room while I’m trying to work on my computer to annoy me with something irrelevant. After my explosion, and they retreat to their rooms, sure enough, that’s when one of my away-children will pop up to chat online, or my husband will skype about something.

You should see the look I give my poor husband when he skypes at those moments. “Ah,” he’ll say, “one of those pecked-to-death-by-ducks days. I’ll make this brief—”

Sometimes (ok, often) I lose it.

But God never runs out of patience, or wants time to Himself, because He doesn’t deal with time. (That still boggles my mind.) He’s got all the non-existent time in the world, and there’s never a queue for those waiting on Him.

I know this, because I’ve prayed at all hours of the day and night, and have never heard celestial bellows of, “I Have Had It With These Children—Today, I Am Done!”

Nope, He’s never going to do that.

2) When you truly love God, you just want to be with Him. I know this, because when I have been patient and kind with my kids (something I pray for every single day—“PLEASE help me be patient and kind!”) they actually want to be with me.

This occurred to me on Sunday as my youngest children squished me on the pew at church. My preschooler is getting too heavy to be on my lap, but since he’s the last, I tolerate it even as my legs lose feeling. My nine-year-old tries to lean on me at the same time because she’s too big for my lap, and my thirteen-year-old will lean on the other side because I’m convenient for when he falls asleep five minutes into the service.

And so I sit, squashed and growing numb.

For a naturally claustrophobic person, this has taken a few years to get used to, but I discovered some time ago that if my kids didn’t like me—or even tolerate me—they’d be sitting much further away. On days like that I think, “I may be doing something right.”

Or I’m just convenient, but I’ll take that.

It’s the same with our Heavenly Father. When we truly know Him and understand His nature, we want to be closer to Him. We read the scriptures more, we pray more, we include Him more in our daily mental conversations. We do all we can to feel closer to Him, and He in turn draws closer to us.

We discover He’s an ally, a friend, a confidante, and while sometimes He needs to chasten us because He loves us, His arms are outstretched still, waiting for us to come back into them.

(I love this painting, “Lost and Found,” by Greg Olsen.)

As a mother, I’m not always successful in this. There are times when my children have done something so heinous (i.e. ruined an appliance/electronic device/toilet) that I have to step away in fury, or my child might be permanently wounded; not physically, but emotionally.

To be fair, this child had permission to destroy the light fixture . . .

. . . only because she wouldn’t let go of the hammer, and I feared for the rest of the house.

There have been moments when I’ve wanted to throw a flood at an “evil” child and wash it far away, but then I remember that God had been warning and pleading with and trying to save His truly evil children before The Flood for 120 years while Noah labored on the ark.

But after 120 seconds, sometimes I’m ready to call down hail-fire and brimstone. (See why I’m always praying to be “patient and kind”?)

3) Heavenly Father wants to be our Father. Before I get into this, allow me backtrack—children need parents. I think this should be obvious, but almost daily I read philosophies that try to downplay the importance of parents, claiming they can be replaced by exceptional schools (I haven’t found any truly exceptional yet), well-structured day-care centers which can care for your child from before breakfast to after dinner, and a socialistic state which “serves” to alleviate the burdens of parenthood, so that adults can do what really matters—work for the betterment of the state.

Parenting, in some socialist theories, is a purely physical function, with those functions ending as soon as the child is delivered.

This isn’t how God sees parenthood. In fact, the title this all-powerful Creator of Heaven and Earth has chosen for himself is Heavenly Father. I’ve referred to Him here frequently as God which, while accurate, I think downplays His role in our lives. “God” is often seen as a distant figure, full of power and anger, ready to trick and punish His subjects in Zeus-like ways. The gods love to mess with us puny mortals.

The problem is, much of the world regards the Supreme Being of the cosmos this way. But that’s not a true image. Rather, it’s one Satan tries to promote in his effort to keeps us as far away from our Father as he can.

Our Father is an all-loving, ever-patient, ever-tender Father—to all of us. No matter our race, religion, political background, or any other potentially divisive measure, He wants to parent us, as a Perfect Parent would: solely concerned about our well-being.

Our Heavenly Father has no other agenda, no other pressing concerns, other than our eternal happiness. There’s nothing He wants more than to bring us home again with our souls intact from this life-long test we told Him we wanted to take.

Think about the best dad you know—maybe yours, maybe a friend’s. (Interestingly, a lot of people’s perceptions of God are based upon their relationships with their own fathers.) What made that dad so great? His every thought was for his kids, wasn’t it?

Just like our Heavenly Father.

But we puny mortals usually aren’t as wholly devoted to parenthood. Certainly not me, unfortunately. Sure, I’m concerned about my kids, put aside my own plans to help them with theirs, and often forsake sleep, food, and sanity to help them when they’re troubled.

But even as I type this morning, I’m interrupted by my daughter getting ready for school, my son splashing in his bath, my other son failing again to wake up . . . and here I sit typing. (Notice how I said they’re interrupting me—how I come first, instead of them?) I’m not 24-hours-a-day focused on my children.

“Helicopter parenting,” on the other hand, is not God-like parenting, either, because it’s not done out of concern for children, but out of anxiety of what society may think of us as parents.

While wholly attentive, Heavenly Father is not a helicopter parent. He allows us to make mistakes, to skin our knees, even to punch our siblings, because He knows this life is a test, and no one ever learns from a test if they’re not allowed to actually take it. He allows us to fail so that we can begin to improve.

However, I admit there are times I probably should be more attentive than I am, so that the above-mentioned ruined appliances/devices/toilets don’t get ruined.

Or so that this, for example, doesn’t happen.

That’s not a problem Heavenly Father faces. A nearly-ruined earth, maybe, but nothing that His Son cannot heal. No, Heavenly Father is far more focused and far more in the details of our lives than we’ll ever understand while in mortality.

Only when we get to the other side and review our existence will we see how often He nudged a situation for us, or diverted a disaster, or steadied us, much like we steady our own children as they learn to ride a bike. Rarely do they know, in their excitement that first time without training wheels, how closely we’re running behind them and straightening their bikes until they can do it themselves.

Likewise, we’ll be surprised to see how often our Heavenly Dad’s hand was touching our lives to make sure we stayed on course.

People occasionally ask me why I have so many kids, and I give my usual, flippant answer of “My husband and I really don’t know. What keeps causing this? Can you explain it to me? Draw diagrams?”

But once another answer came to my mind, when my Heavenly Father was gently nudging me to not be so trivial.

The answer was, So that I can learn to be more like my Heavenly Parents.

Because yes, there is a Heavenly Mother, too, but my theory is that She’s dealing with the children not yet born, or who have already died and gone back, so Heavenly Father is dealing with those of us on “away missions” while She focuses on those “back home.” Even Heavenly Parents have a division of labor.

I also have a lot of children because I’m a very slow learner (no, we figured out how they’re conceived a few years ago—glad we got that cleared up). Each child has taught me a different aspect of how my Heavenly Father wishes me to be, and I’m needing lots of years of practice to start getting close to His vision for me.

But, fortunately, I have Perfect Examples to follow.

Mahrree often felt as if she were looking into the eyes of the Creator Himself as Gleace listened earnestly to Peto’s description of kickball, offered advice to Deck on selecting cattle to start his herd, chuckled at Jaytsy’s explanation of her mother’s first attempt to garden, and laughed at hearing how Perrin became a cat owner. He paid full attention to each of them, as if no one else existed, and what they had to say was the most important thing ever.

Mahrree knew there were some people who envisioned the Creator as a great and terrible Being, full of impatient vengeance for the fallibility of His creations.

But Mahrree had always pictured someone else: a perfect Father who wanted to make sure His children knew they were loved and cared about. ~Book 5, Safety Assured Leaving East of Medicetti

If you could give your younger self a message from the future, what would it be?

September 16, 2016September 16, 2016trishmercer Leave a comment

That’s how I felt two days ago, and wondered if I could.

Allow me to back up a bit. My blog is a little late this week, because I spent a few days in a hospital two hours away assisting my oldest daughter with her second born, and then with her toddler son.

When her little girl was only hours old, and big brother was on his way with his daddy to meet her, I warned my daughter, “He may not yet be two years old, but you’ll be astonished at how old your son will suddenly appear in relation to your newborn. He’ll age years in just moments.”

Big brother and baby sister.

Because that was the shock I felt when I sat years ago in a hospital room holding my second-born, and my mother brought my oldest, barely two years old, to meet her.

All I could think was, “Who is this giant child?!” It was as if time had taken a enormous step in seven-league boots, and my first baby was now a kid.

My two oldest daughters, 2 years old and five days old, 1992.

As I warned that same “kid,” now 25 years old, I felt that immense step again, striking me with sudden reality that those two tiny girls were now women; the older a graduate student nearly finished with her thesis, just as I was with small children, the other a nursing student hoping to be a newborn nurse in a couple of years.

I wish I could have stretched through time and tapped my younger self on the shoulder—the me who stared at her two little girls and wondered, What have I done? Why did I think I could be a mother to two children?!

I would have said to her, “For just a moment, look here. See what will happen in twenty-four shockingly short years.

“You’ll have some rough years, difficult months, and terrible days, but also many wonderful ones, and eventually you’ll see this: your two formerly-baby daughters, with your first granddaughter. Hold on to this image for when your hope flags and your confidence wanes. It’ll be good. Eventually, it’ll all be good.”

(I would not have told my younger self, however, that I’d have seven more children. I/she would have dropped in a dead faint, never to be revived.)

As I watched my daughters and yearned to encourage my younger self, I imagined that I felt a gentle tap on my shoulder. I wondered if it were a distant me, another twenty-four years in the future with too much white hair to pretend it’s only highlights, and with so much experience that I’m sure I’d regard my forty-seven-year-old self as naïve.

I imagined I heard a seventy-one-year-old whisper, “For just a moment, look here. See what’s happened . . .”

I hope that I/she was smiling, as I was this week. I hope that I/she was sending me a message of encouragement, of never giving up. I’m sure there’ll be events that she’ll have witnessed in our future that will be heartbreaking, but others that will be glorious beyond my current imagining. I hope it’s to one of those scenes I/she is wishing to draw my attention, just for a moment.

And I hope that the ninety-five-year-old Trish, witnessing yet another scene of astonishment, is tapping the seventy-one-year-old me on the shoulder, and chuckling and weeping with joy as she does so.

Two hours later an exhausted Mahrree, drenched with sweat and tears, and shocked that so much could change so quickly, stared at the bundle in her arms. Her mother and the midwives were surprised that the baby was so small. Mahrree’s seeming enormity must have been a trick of the eye, they decided, magnified by her slight frame. The baby probably came early.

But she didn’t know what they were talking about; nothing about the newborn she spent the last hour and a half birthing seemed small. ~Book 1, Forest at the Edge of the World

Parenthood, summed up in one horrible bathroom incident

March 15, 2016trishmercer 5 Comments

My four-year-old is my youngest of nine children. You’d think that after 25 years of being a mom, I’d be an expert, but you’re never an expert, I’ve decided.

Especially when it comes to potty-training.

With our first child, I took the excellent advice to “not rush it.” This was the early 90s when having your barely-know-how-to-walk one-year-old potty trained was the rage.

It was actually the mom who was trained, to rush her tiny charge to the bathroom every two hours and plop the toddler on the toilet with great hope. Never being that disciplined, I instead encouraged and suggested, and finally had a trained daughter when she was three.

I followed that same laissez faire approach with my other kids, too, but my sons took a bit longer.

Ohhh . . . my sons and potty training.

Boys are the worst, and I have five of them.

I won’t name names, but one son had a propensity for “forgetting,” and he was well into preschool age before accidents weren’t a weekly—or daily—affair.

Another son would, in a half-asleep stupor, mistake his closet for the bathroom every night. It took us weeks to figure out where the smell was coming from, and why. Once we did, we had to replace the carpet and pad in there, along with a few toys.

Another son simply refused to use the toilet, afraid of it. One of his first public potty encounters was with a toilet which automatically, and noisily, flushed itself. He was sure that all toilets were ready to swallow him whole.

Another child was perfectly easy to potty train, leaving me to believe I’d finally figured things out and was a fantastic mother.

Nope. He was just an easy kid.

And we’re not going to talk about the years of bed wetting. Which were years. (I wept with joy when Febreeze was invented.)

So when it came to potty training Boy #5, I didn’t have any illusions that I knew how to do it within 48 hours, or tear-free, or bribery-free. We just went for it.

(We’ll allow #5 to retain his dignity and remain anonymous.)

(If you’re a bit squeamish, perhaps you don’t want to continue reading. But if you’re a parent, none of this will be new to you.)

Fortunately #5 had no problem with #1. Watching his older brothers (who were happy to show off their skills) encouraged him that he wanted to be as big as the teenagers he adored.

It’s #2 that’s been the horror.

He won’t do it on a toilet. We don’t know why. It’s not as if toddlers are good at articulating their reticence about certain activities.

We started trying waaaay back before his third birthday, and while he’s been an expert at shooting the water for over a year (we won’t discuss aim, which even my bigger boys seem to struggle with until they leave high school), the idea of sitting and plopping was a no-go.

Instead, he grabs a pull-up, puts it on himself, hides in the privacy of his bedroom, then comes out ten minutes later with a coy smile and says to me sweetly, “Mommy? Can you please change me? I love you.” Batting his lashes is the crowning touch.

“But I don’t love doing this,” I tell him each time he assumes the position and I pull out the baby wipes.

“Yes, you do. Because you love me. But don’t tell Daddy I do this.”

It always makes me feel dirty when he says that. But Daddy knows.

Daddy frowns at Pull-up Boy, and promises greater things, like setting off smoke bombs or exploding fireworks tanks, if #5 puts #2 in the potty.

We had success after Christmas, when we promised him a shiny new fire engine that makes noise if he went. (Go ahead, judge me for bribing my child. I don’t care what anyone thinks anymore.)

He did it once, and we immediately took him to Walmart, and he loved his fire engine . . . and he never went #2 again because he got his reward.

I hate it when the kids are cleverer than me.

But yesterday, something changed.

I was in the kitchen making dinner when suddenly my 4-year-old stood there, beaming. The fact that he wore only a t-shirt, and nothing below, gave me a hint as to what he was going to exclaim.

“Mom! Mom! I did it! I put stinkies in the potty!”

“Really?!” I don’t know who was happier.

“Come see!” and he took off running to the bathroom.

That’s when I realized that not all of the stinky got into the toilet. A lot of it was smeared down the back of his legs.

As a parent, there are times that you brace yourself for what you’re about to find, and you recite in your head, No matter what, I’ll be cheerful. No matter what, I’ll be cheerful . . .

When I arrived at the bathroom, the story was waiting for me.

First were his pants and underwear, tossed on my bedroom floor as if he were in a hurry.

Then, the pull-ups, left sadly next to the door, because there wasn’t enough time.

Then . . .

The bathroom.

I steeled myself, because sometimes, no matter how often you tackle a mess, it’s shocking when you first encounter it.

But #5 stood next to the toilet, beaming in joy. “Look! Some of it got in!”

It did, along with half a roll of toilet paper.

The rest was on the seat, the floor, and the bath mat.

Boys struggle with having two outlets, and sometimes they don’t have full control of either. My son stood in a yellow puddle, grinning madly.

There was only one option for me as his mother.

“I’m so proud of you!” I cheered and clapped.

Full of praise and happiness, I suggested we finish wiping him up, waist to toe, and I sent him to tell his siblings the good news so I could tidy up the bathroom.

That’s where my 15-year-old found me a few minutes later. “He actually went stinky in the toilet? Whoa . . .” and he backed up when he saw how I straddled one mess to wipe up another. “I was about to say, Bet you’re glad he didn’t give you a mess in a pull-up, but—”

“But say nothing to him,” I warned Big Brother. “This is a huge step for him—”

“You’ll have to take a few huge steps just to get out of there—”

I pointed at him. “The mess isn’t important,” I said. “Nor is it important that I had to use five baby wipes on him, and that I’ll use about a dozen Clorox wipes in here. What’s important is that he finally did something hard for him. We cheer and praise, and clean up the mess quietly later, without making him feel anything but joy for his accomplishment, which has been years in the making.”

And that, I realized, summed up parenthood.

Along with this request to Big Brother, “And bring me another trash bag, please.”

Oh yes, being their mother was by far the most difficult work she’d ever undertaken. And it also was, by far, the most satisfying. At the end of the day she knew she’d accomplished an enormous amount of work, even if the house looked as messy as it had in the morning. But at this point of her life, messy meant success. Things happened.

~Book 2, Soldier at the Door

We adults have ruined the world for our kids

September 24, 2015September 24, 2015trishmercer 7 Comments

Once again someone has sent me a trite old email about “How great things were in the past!” and “How awful things are today!”

Surely you’ve seen these before, the less-than-subtle comparison that when we were kids we knew how to be kids, unlike kids today who are pathetic pansies.

However, there are two major problems with such grossly inaccurate nostalgia trips:

1) Life was never as good as we remember it, and;

2) If we don’t like the way life is for our kids, we—their parents and grandparents—are to blame.

First, let’s look objectively to some of the ridiculous claims about how we “survived” and are somehow inherently “better” than the younger generation. Many pieces like this one detailed below float around, but since this is the most comprehensive, we’ll use it to demonstrate the selective memory problems so many in the older generations suffer from. This one is called:

TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED
The 1930’s 40’s, 50’s, 60’s and 70’s

(From: http://www.corsinet.com/braincandy/hage5.html)

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us. So there’s no problem with mothers smoking and drinking during pregnancy? Or are you willing to admit that no, not everyone emerged as “good” as you?

They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn’t get tested for diabetes. And they also had a lot more problems during childbirth as a result. But you don’t remember your birth, so obviously this detail doesn’t matter.

Then after that trauma, our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paints. Lead-based paint causes problems in mental acuity, which the author of this piece of propaganda demonstrates all too well.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking. And the author also doesn’t remember that children died from poisonings at higher rates than they do now, and that many children suffered from brain damage or worse when they crashed on their bikes. There were consequences. Although brain damage causes us to forget . . .

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags. And the families who died in car accidents back then aren’t around to explain how seat belts and air bags would have saved their lives.

Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat. Stupid, but special. Again, loss of memory=brain damage. (Or marijuana use. Go ahead–ask Grandpa about the drug culture of the 60s and 70s.)

We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle. So why don’t you let your grandkids drink from the hose?

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this. No one dies now, either. It’s usually kids’ parents and grandparents who freak out about them sharing.

We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we weren’t overweight because WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING! But an enormous amount of the adult population is overweight now, because you never outgrew drinking soda and eating sugar. Type 2 diabetes, anyone? Everyone?

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on. So why did you create a society where your kids and grandkids can’t have such freedom? Why do you call social services when you see kids walking by themselves to a nearby park?

No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K. It’s not kids who buy cell phones to carry around; it’s their parents.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem. But when your kids/grandkids ask to use supplies in the shed, you yell at them to not make a mess, not make any noise, and go to their rooms and be quiet. So they turn to their games . . .

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo’s, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms……….WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them! So why do you now yell at the neighbor kids when they’re outside running around and making noise? Why do you call their parents and threaten to sic the cops on them for accidentally running across your lawn?

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents. Kids don’t file lawsuits; their parents file lawsuits. Why are you doing this now?

We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever. So why do you not let your own kids/grandkids explore this way?

We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes. Kids don’t call the cops on other kids with BB guns. Adults do that. Why did you change?

We rode bikes or walked to a friend’s house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them! So stop accompanying your children, or telling them to use a phone, or tell them that you don’t want them out on their own.

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn’t had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!! So now that you’re coaching these teams and have put your kids in these sports, why have you changed the rules?

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law! So why don’t you respect the law anymore, and defend your precious “innocent” babies instead?

This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever! And has also produced adults that over-parent their children and limit their development. Why is that?

The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas. Surely you don’t think YOU’VE accomplished all of that, do you? Millions take credit for the work of just a few thousand.

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL! And yet you’re afraid to let your children and grandchildren have that same experience?

You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good. Ah, I see! Individuals don’t have any responsibility—it’s all the lawyers government’s fault!? You just claimed earlier to have “responsibility,” but only when it’s convenient? No, I’m sorry. You can’t pin all of these changes on the government. And how many of you are lawyers? We all have to take responsibility for how our children turn out.

And while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave their parents were. And just how dramatically they changed the world you now live in. Yes, your parents and grandparents destroyed everything when they became grownups. Remember that when you choose their nursing home.

How many of us have naively imagined Thanksgiving looking like this? How often have we actually achieved it? Everyone smiling? Yeah, me too.

The problem is the “good ole days” never really existed. Even in the 1950s—a classical age many of our older generations hark back to—we knew this.

Morris Wright in 1957, wrote this about the beloved Norman Rockwell paintings that I’ve used in this blog:

“We might say that Mr. Rockwell’s special triumph is in the conviction his countrymen share that the mythical world he evokes actually exists. This cloudland of nostalgia seems to loom higher and higher on the horizon . . . and disappears from view . . . leaving the drab world of common place facts and sensations behind.” [emphasis added] (Approaching Zion, Hugh Nibley (1989), page 523. )

Here’s another plug for “Those were the good ole days” that never were. https://www.facebook.com/1035wimz/photos/a.180388971978038.49555.121975634486039/871131596237102/?type=1

And another that touts many poor decisions as “ok” and “Hey, we survived.” However, I appreciate that she prefaced her list with this:

Now, as a parent myself, my own parents like to tell me I’m too overprotective.
“Really?”
“Well, you survived,” they say.
“Yep, but it seems like the odds were against me.” http://thestir.cafemom.com/big_kid/165499/21_Things_80s_Kids_Did

Another “We had it so tough but we also had it so great, so we’ll just ignore all the other bits.” https://amyunjaded.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/70s-80s.jpg

This one’s more balanced, with an interesting comparison of a few decades ago with today. There are advantages and disadvantages to both times, and let’s remember that. http://preventdisease.com/news/15/020515_10-Differences-Child-Grew-Up-70s-Compared-To-Today.shtml

Check out this video by Nature Valley Granola, and ask yourself: who bought all the gadgets for their kids and grandkids? Who’s responsible for teaching them how to really play outside? It seems that some adults are realizing that hey—all of this is our fault. And we’re also the solution. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is5W6GxAI3c

The next time someone older than 30 (yes, don’t trust anyone over 30!) sends you a nostalgic turn of the belly via email or social media, challenge them with this: Prove that life really was better “back then.” And don’t let them use only their hazy and selective memories. Make them use real data.

Don’t worry. They won’t. They can’t. They’re still not sure what “Google it” means.

In many ways our society is far better than it ever was. Yes, we have huge and glaring problems—I rant about those enough, so I won’t do so here—but we’ve also done a few things right. For example:

We’re far more compassionate.

Many decades ago a relative of mine committed suicide. His grieving family was shunned, and even a basic burial was denied him. Today, we’re far more helpful to those suffering from mental illness, and we open our arms to love those left behind when someone loses the fight.
To those of various religions. Only fifty years ago this was a very Protestant country. Catholics and Jews were commonly snubbed. Ask your grandma about the fear of a Catholic John F. Kennedy running for president. Although we still have far to go, we tolerate others’ beliefs far better than we ever have. Mormons like me haven’t been run out of a state since the 19th century.

We’re far more accepting.

Of different races. Seriously, we are. Ask anyone who grew up in the south in the 1940s and 1950s. Ask them what they remember about where the blacks and whites lived, and where they got drinks of water, and where they worshipped. We’ve made HUGE strides. The problems we have now are frequently manufactured and piddly in comparison.
Of homosexuals. The closet door has been open for a long time now.
Of different lifestyles. Just a decade ago anyone who was a vegetarian was snickered at. Now, a lot more people are looking to eat healthier, smarter, cleaner. “Alternative” is becoming “mainstream.” We’re less worried about “fitting in,” which is marvelous progress.

We’re far better about acknowledging and fixing problems.

Not so long ago, alcoholism was ignored. It was a condition whispered about, but rarely helped. Just ignore it and the problems will go away, was the shallow hope.
Oh, and advertisements used to feature doctors, babies, and even Santa to sell cigarettes. Admirable, very admirable.
Abuse in the home was also another “Don’t talk about” issue. Kids would come to school bruised and battered, wives (or worse, husbands) would have black eyes from “accidents,” and it was very rare that anyone ever stepped in to help.
Same with sexual abuse. We tend to think that’s a recent problem, but it’s not. Kids who were sexually abused in the 1970s were told to just “forget about it,” and their parents would as well. Employ the trusty, “Ignore it, and it’ll go away,” like that giant elephant in the living room which grows bigger and stinks more horrendously every day.

We’re far better at talking.

About all those issues above, and many, many more. Some senior citizens think we talk too much—they derisively call it “gossip”—but frankly, I wouldn’t want to live in any other generation. Yes, we’ve got problems far worse than many of our ancestors faced, but we also are tackling them in ways they never dared.

“But the older generation, with its propensity to remember everything far better than it ever was, will be a harder sell.” ~Chairman Nicko Mal, Book 3, The Mansions of Idumea

Whose children are those?

February 8, 2014May 27, 2015trishmercer 2 Comments

“[T]he children belong to all of us.”
~Paul Reville, former Massachusetts secretary of education, Common Core enthusiast, and Harvard professor

Mr. Paul Reville.
(And some of the kids that apparently belong to him.)

Mr. Reville (and I’m trying very hard not pronounce his name as “revile” in my head) recently stated the above about who the children of America belong to (read an excellent discussion in Forbes about this here), and as a mother of nine, I’m baffled.

What, exactly, does this mean: my children belong to the country? The government?

So you will now change my toddler’s diapers? Drive my daughter to lacrosse practice? Take my son to his doctor appointments? Why, thank you!

Will you now make their meals, help with their school work, and take them shoe shopping, one of the most horrible experiences a mother and child can endure?

Yes, I’m being facetious; you—whoever this nebulous “you” is that constitutes “all of us”—certainly don’t want the daily grind of parenthood.

So why does Mr. Reville and others claim to have part possession of my children?

This question has weighed on me for years now, and I think I have a few answers.

The short answer is, because they want the capital my child may potentially make.

That’s all it is: money. How much might my child be worth someday. Yes, I realize this sounds crass and simplistic, but I’m afraid it’s true. As a citizen who’s watched the progress of education since I was an education major in college 25 years ago (I gave that up to become a college instructor instead, at the urging of some of my professors), I’ve tracked the changes in theories, especially as they applied to my children.

I’ve come away with one discouraging conclusion: Public education is not about improving the humanity of our citizens; public education is about producing the best workers to make the most money for our country and our leadership. You see, good workers make more money, which brings in higher taxes, which means those with a stake in product development (i.e. Bill Gates, et al.) and government (primarily the federal) make more money.

The children belong to “all of us” because the children are needed to make those in power more powerful.

The End.
Yeah, dismal story.

And while it’s a true story, I refuse to let it be the story my children will be forced into.

Mr. Reville, and Melissa Harris-Perry who also believes that “we have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families, and recognize that kids belong to their communities,” you’re wrong.

You see, we are faced with an ideological split, here; I believe in God (yes, here it comes—I already see you rolling your eyes, but there are still a few of us God-nuts around, so you better learn to deal with us civilly), and I believe that God has sent my children to my husband and I. And I also believe that He has given us responsibility to raise them.

As a bold proclamation on families states, “Parents have a sacred duty to rear their children in love and righteousness, to provide for their physical and spiritual needs, and to teach them to love and serve one another.”

Ah, there’s a sticky word: responsibility. You see, Mr. Reville, children are not possessions, they are not future capital, and they certainly are not to use for your own means.

They are personalities, ancient and precious, sent here to embark on a most remarkable experience: mortality. The purpose of mortality is to test their will, develop their understanding, and see what choices they will make in the face of trials and temptations.

You happen to be in the exact same situation—you, too, are an old soul trying on a new body and seeing how well you do in this remarkable Test.

But Mr. Revill, you do not own my children. I don’t even own them. They are my stewardship, which is a very different thing than ownership.

Stewardship requires an accounting to be made to Him who gave you responsibility in the first place. Mr. Reville, I fear that the only person you and others with your mindset think you are accountable to are yourselves. That makes you akin to your own god, and I can’t think of a single human that was ever a worthy god.

You may claim that my children belong to you, to the state, but I will not give them up without a fight, I assure you. Already I’m showing these arguments and theories to my children and telling them how “all of us” is trying to control their education and futures.

Yes, everyone, I freely admit it: I’m indoctrinating my children to what I believe is most accurate and correct. I call that “teaching.”

And public education, especially the kind that Mr. Reville is promoting, is also its own brand of indoctrination.

So my friends, we have a battle brewing—one that’s actually been around for thousands of years. Education and who “owns” the children is just its front; the real battle is about who has the power, and how much we’re willing to let happen until we begin to fight back against that power.

“Education is a weapon, whose effect depends on who holds it in his hands, and at whom it is aimed.” ~Joseph Stalin (Yes, the bad guy in the Soviet Union)

Every revolt, every revolution, every call to arms has always been about power. And this time, the battle is beginning in our very homes and schools, by those laying claim to our children, and those of us refusing to let them go.

Lew Rockwell, a politician with whom I don’t always agree (I’m currently a political agnostic: I don’t really believe in any political party) nevertheless makes this excellent point:

“It isn’t a coincidence that governments everywhere want to educate children. Government education, in turn, is supposed to be evidence of the state’s goodness and its concern for our well-being. The real explanation is less flattering. If the government’s propaganda can take root as children grow up, these kids will be no threat to the state apparatus. They’ll fasten the chains to their own ankles.”

No, Mr. Reville; my children do not belong to you. I hope that someday their humanity, knowledge, work ethic, and values will benefit you and their communities, but those benefits will come because their parents were concerned first with raising people who respect God and feel a sense of stewardship to take care of the world and each other. Their purpose in life is to become warm, thoughtful, loving humans, not obedient worker bees. And Mr. Reville, I’m sure that in your old age, you’ll hope you’re surrounded by the former and not the latter.

In the meantime, please leave my children out of whatever schemes you’re devising, because frankly, I have no faith in you or in others that clomp around to the same dull drummer.

Consider these two thoughts from another celebrated university professor, C. S. Lewis:

Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.

Parents–hold tight to your children. I used to think I only had to worry about shady characters driving slowly down my street holding out candy to my kids. Now, we have all kinds of folks trying to take possession of something none of us truly own.

Perrin turned to his wife. “This morning I told you our most precious possessions were safe with Zenos. But they aren’t—”
“Our babies AREN’T safe?!” Mahrree squealed, twisting absurdly to look behind her as if she could see her children sobbing from miles away.
“Mahrree, Mahrree,” he chuckled, “I mean, they aren’t our possessions.”
Mahrree breathed deeply and patted her chest to catch her breath.
“Sorry,” he kissed her on the cheek. “Zenos is fine with them, I’m sure of it.” His face grew solemn. “But it’s been pressing deep into my mind, ever since I called them our possessions. It’s just that . . . Mahrree, we’re told in Command School about the duties of soldiers and citizens. One thing we had to recite was that sending children to school was the citizens’ responsibility to the government.”
Mahrree blinked at the odd phrase. “Our duty to the government? To hand over our children to their care?”
“That was one of King Querul the Second’s statements, and the Administrators never abolished it. After all, citizens earn money which is then taxed and given to the government. In a way, the government—and it doesn’t matter whose—sees themselves as owning the people. They don’t serve us,” he whispered harshly, “but instead, we work for them. Without our taxes, they’re nothing. They’re especially interested in the children, because if they’re successful, then so will be the government. Or perhaps I should say ‘wealthy,’ instead of ‘successful,’” he grumbled in annoyance. “It all comes down to riches and power.”