IS It My Business?

In my own life, and in reading different posts here on Gather, a lot of different questions have been coming up for me.  Most recently, in another post, a woman said something about her son's relationships being none of her business or something to that effect; this hit fairly close to home because of the recent events involving my not-quite-15-year-old daughter, but in other ways as well.  What I am wondering right now is at what point has it become the norm to give your children free rein over the things they do and the choices they make?  At what age is it suddenly acceptable to assume your children are capable of making adult decisions and to allow them to do it?  After some recent events in my own life (see details here), I have really had to stop and think hard about my own children, what my responsibilities as a parent are, and at what point I have to let them sink or swim.

Like most issues I have experienced in my last 15 years of parenting, there isn't any one answer that applies to every family, no blanket solution.  So I have to focus only on what I believe to be right for me and my children, both as individuals and as a family unit.  While my kids each have the opportunity to have a say in what happens to them or what they want in their lives, I have absolute veto power.  Last year, my daughter really, really wanted to go live with her dad.  I was not at all happy with her desire on a variety of levels, but I thought and prayed and talked to friends about it until I came to the conclusion that I had to let her go, to let her make that choice for herself.  It was in many ways a disaster, and she came back home for good this summer.  I could have told her until I was blue in the face what would happen and why I did not want her to go, but she had to learn the lessons for herself.   In my opinion, and for her as a person in her own right, I felt that to allow her to have some control in what happened to her in this particular instance was necessary for several reasons: so that she would learn that the grass ISN'T always (if ever) greener on the other side of the fence. That all of the things she hated about her life here were the very things she would miss.  That just because someone talks a good talk does not necessarily mean that the talk is true.  They were difficult, lonely lessons for her to learn, but she came home a much stronger, happier person.

What is and isn't my business as a parent?  Is it my business to tell her where she can and can't live?  Absolutely.  Would I have been able to stop her from going to her dad's?  Yep, I sure would.  Was that a pretty "adult" decision for her to have been allowed to make?  Yes, it was.  That, however, doesn't mean I think she is now capable of running her own life without my interference, so to speak.

This is where my responsiblity lies: to attempt to make sure that my kids have all of the information they need to make decisions, as well as to prevent situations where they may be confronted with things they can't handle.  It is my responsibility to make sure my children are as safe as they possibly CAN be.  That doesn't mean I keep them in the house, isolated from any potential for harm.  Far from it.  What it means is that it is my business to know who their friends are, who THEIR parents are, whether or not there are drugs or alcohol or guns accessible to the kids.  Whether or not they have proper supervision at my house, their house, at the movies.  It is not always fail safe, as the above link to my other article shows; I have no control over what REALLY goes on in other people's homes.  However, if I do MY job to the best of my ability, that is about the best I can do.  Of course kids are going to disobey, sneak around, have sex or smoke or drink if they want to; kids are sneaky, that is just what they DO.  However, because they are MY kids and the things they do ARE my business, I will not knowingly allow them the opportunity for, say, privacy in my home with their 15 year old boyfriend/girlfriend.  I will know where they are and who they are with.  If they do not show up home when they are supposed to and I don't know where they are, I WILL call the police.  This isn't about controlling my kids, and isn't even about whether or not I trust them.  I just know that it is too easy to get into dangerous situations and not be able to get out of them, so why should I willingly give my kids the opportunity to do that?

Here is what happens when parent stop being reposnsible for their kids.  I read this article on Yahoo news this moring, and have to wonder where his parents were.  Maybe in the house being part of the deal, I don't know.  But what we have now in our nation is a couple of generations of children who have been allowed to basically make whatever decisions they make without any kind of guidance from their parents.  Because parents don't think it is their business, or because we have been brainwashed into believing all of the crap about invading our kids' privacy and violating their human rights.  Oh, please.

I love my kids, more than life itself.  I respect them, I respect their minds and their feelings and their thoughts.  I trust them; I trust who they are inside, I trust the adults they will grow up to be, I trust what it is in their hearts and minds.  However, I also know that none of them at this point are capable of making the wisest decisions, and I have to judge objectively whether or not they can handle a particular situation.  I can and do provide knowledge and guidance and support; I can allow them the freedom to have a say.  What I don't have to do and shouldn't do is treat them like adults.  They aren't.  They are, respectivly, 15, 13, 8, and 18 months.  I only have three more years,  give or take a few months, before my daughter IS an adult; I have only three more years in which to help her learn how to make adult decisions, to teach her that there are consequences to every choice she makes, and to let her fall on her ass a few times in order to learn some of those lessons.  But until the moment she walks out my door to start her own adult life, I AM responsible.  It IS my business, because I love her.