Mommy’s little secrets

As our kids get older, we are faced with a dilemma that can be summed up in this timeworn phrase:

“Do as I say, not as I do.”

Of course, it’s important to set an example for your kids by your actions. But, just when you are convinced that they haven’t been paying attention to anything you say, know this: they are, and they are taking copious mental notes. Because, if it’s OK for mommy to say a bad word, it must be OK for me to say it, too. Right? I wrote about an example of that, when the 3-year-old used a substitute swear word he’d heard me say and inserted it into a grammatically correct insult, flung at his oldest brother.  Well, that’s all funny and cute and HAHAHAHA! when they’re in preschool, but much less so when the stakes are higher.

That brings me to Liza Mundy’s story from the Washington Post Magazine on Sunday, May 4. The photo on the cover of the magazine was of a woman from the waist down, with a glass bong and a flask of bourbon in her apron pockets. It made me giggle, but in an uncomfortable way. Because, for as much fun as we all had in high school and college, and all the hilarious drinking stories we tell, we know now that our hijinx will somehow come home to roost when our own kids reach college.

We know what we did way back then, and we survived, right? Maybe just barely, but we got through it. We can look back now and say to ourselves, how stupid! What was I thinking?  Yet as parents, our instinct is to protect our kids from all harm, including the very special experience (rite of passage?) of having a friend hold back your hair while you puke in the dorm bathroom. (Meg, meet Vodka. Vodka, meet Meg.)

Mundy’s story debated the merits of full disclosure of your wild & crazy past to your kids. If you tell them about dancing on the bar at the neighborhood watering hole, or about the time you and the guys went for a drive in the country and banged mailboxes with the car door, or about the big party you threw when your parents were out of town, or the ill-conceived BB gun war, will they see it as a cautionary tale, or license to misbehave? My own mom shared with me stories of leaving her college campus to go drink in some remote location. (Of course, in her version of the story, there was always a designated driver, and that was before the term was in common use.)

The article didn’t seem to reach any conclusion other than that you have to do what you feel is best for your own situation. I’m not yet sure what that means for my own family, but I am increasingly aware of the magnifying glass my kids are using to observe our behavior. I do understand that getting yourself into - and out of - situations during your teens and early 20s is part of the growing process. You can’t mature in that way if you don’t experience those, um, opportunities. Because really, would I be who I am today if I had not snuck out to that party when I said I was going to the movies?

“Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

So, as if parenting young children weren’t hard enough, we now face this ethical dilemma, wherein we have to convince the younger generation that, thanks to the gift of hindsight, we would NEVER have had those older kids buy us beer so we could host that party, because THINK OF THE CONSEQUENCES we barely dodged!

More importantly, we need to have faith that all the values we’ve been working so hard to instill in our children have taken root, and will enable them to weigh the risks of their actions, and decide whether it’s a risk worth taking. My mom shared something else with me - a nugget that I have repeated many times. In saying it, she alluded to having engaged in more shenanigans than she let on:

“Do what you’re going to do; just be smart enough not to get caught.”

I think that was her way of letting go, of saying, I’ve done all I can to equip you with the tools to make good decisions. I know you’re going to do some of the crazy stuff that I did in college, but you have a good head on your shoulders and I know you’ll be discreet, you’ll know your limits, and you’ll be smart enough not to get into trouble.

I hope I can have the confidence to give the same advice to my kids. When they turn 30.