Thoughts from a Thinking Girl

There are many parental refrains I have perfected, and more that I’m trying to eliminate from my daily routine. My son is about to become a middle schooler, and I have to step back, way back, from the “Did you brush your teeth?” and “Don’t forget your raincoat” kind of parenting. Decisions need to fall more and more under his domain; my role is to help him make decisions, no longer to tell him what to do. Wish me luck on that one.

My son will have many other venues helping him learn decision-making. The fifth grade “Family Life and Sexual Health”  – aka, FLASH – curriculum has a unit on decision-making. Since all kids his age are on the verge of making more and more of their own decisions, the state has decided to help them with the process. He has been taught the difference between active and passive decision-making, and the process of how to make a decision: consider alternatives, and assess the good and bad consequences for each. Children break into small groups to consider vignettes of upcoming potentially difficult decisions. Shoplifting, underage drinking, body maturation, dating, and friendship dilemmas form the basis of the vignettes, from which the students are to generate possible alternatives, and to weigh the pros and cons.

My son told me about one vignette his group worked on, about a person who was asked to “go steady,” but whose parents say their child can’t go steady before age 15.  What to do? According to my son, answers in the small groups were some variant of telling a slight mistruth – either to the pursuing youngster, the parents, or both. My response: “What about telling the person that your parents said you can’t go steady until you’re 15 so you have to say ‘no’?”

“No one thought of that,” my son said. Even after deliberation as a whole class, with the teacher’s guidance, no one came away with the idea of telling the truth and living with those consequences. Apparently the state doesn’t want to impose the suggestion that truth-telling is an important alternative to consider. I modified my son’s curriculum, just for him, and told him that in our household, we consider telling the truth to be quite a good option, usually with the fewest number of negative consequences. Not exactly stepping back, I know. But how could I leave it be knowing no one had offered up an option that upheld what seem to be reasonable morals and values? Oh, it’s gonna be hard to step back.

Today I decided to head out, in the rain, without my raincoat. I’d have given my son plenty of words had he made this decision, would have stolen the rightful ownership of the decision right out from under his pointy little misguided head. I’d have thought, but hopefully not said, “Are you crazy?”  I’d at least have communicated this via eyeball roll – a parent can only have so much restraint. I’d not have been able to come up with a single “good consequence” if he’d handed me his decision-making worksheet.

But there were plenty of good things I could think of: I wanted to feel the rain on my face, it was only a short distance so I wouldn’t really get soaked, I didn’t care if my hair got wet because I was heading home to shower up, didn’t care about getting gym clothes wet, didn’t care if I got drops on my glasses because they, too, could easily be cleaned. I was hell-bent on this decision, and it was a good one. The feel of the cool spray was refreshing, the light mist just right to cool me off after my work out. I was just the right amount of wet. I made a great decision.

I’ll have to remember this fly-in-the-face-of-usual-reason kind of moment as the coming days and months and years unfold. I’ll have to grant my son an inner reasoning process that may be fully apparent in his head, even if I can’t fathom it. I’ll have to remember that sometimes we choose the imprudent act because that’s the exact thing that makes us remember how much there is in this life and that we don’t want to close ourselves out to it, shield our bodies from every element, make every moment fit the checklist.

I hope I’ll step back for all of these kinds of decisions, giving him wide berth to live outside the lines. But if truth is one of the things pushed off the checklist, you can bet I’ll step right in, with all manner of dutiful parental refrains, full sit-downs if necessary, and I still reserve the right for a well-timed eye roll, if that’s what it takes.