Another Boring day at the Storage Units & Memories of raising children

Only 25 left to go before I can finally have Sundays off so I wish the moving season would start soon. Working 7 days a week is not bad when you are working form your home but after 8 months Sundays off would be really really nice. Emily was kicking up a storm today in Aprils belly. Pregnancy is still amazing to me. That something so perfect can grow inside you and then turn into a human being sounds like something out of a fantasy novel. Its been fun to watch. Very glad I am not having any more of my own. Don't even feel the slightest urge to have more children anymore. I like my nice quiet peaceful adult life. Kids are fun to play with but walking around naked and being able to go to the bathroom by yourself (occasionally) is just as good if not better as you get older. Must be a hormone thing. When I was young and Stupid I wanted 7 Kids, 1 for each day of the week. After two Les got fixed and I really didn't want him too. I would have liked at least one more, now I am sooooo glad that he did. I loved being pregnant and I loved nursing but once they passed six months they weren't much fun for me until they were about 10.

I was a mean mother they did every chore in the house starting when they were 4 years old. I started them on bathrooms, Give a can of scrubbing bubbles and a wash cloth to a child and tell them to spray it everywhere and they think it is fun at least for the first few time. I never paid an allowance because work is something you do as part of a family. Their curfew was 10pm until they were 16 and 11PM until they moved out. I see no reason why a parent who has to go to work the next morning should have to stay up to worry about a kid. For most of their childhood they did not have cable and for a large part there was no TV at all. There was no soda there was no candy except for special occasions and holidays. I moved them to a farm when they were 12 and 9, 5 miles from the nearest town. I made them buy their own cars and pay for all their own expenses and insurance. They have both had jobs since they were 14 and worked in the family business before that. They have both survived all my harshness and done well, Hubby and I are amazed at times that they turned out so good when we were such rotten children from such screwed up families ourselves. There were times when I was too harsh. Third grade when Joshua was paddled every night because he wouldn't behave in school and other things that happened in a spur of Madness of whatever he had done at the moment. They was no explicit privacy, as long as they lived in my house and didn't pay rent I could walk into their rooms at any time and it damn well was going to be kept clean (this worked better with josh than April) I was not perfect, not by a long shot but I did try.

The things I did give them were honesty and support and unconditional Love and homemade food. I never lied to them about life and never believed any of this touchy feely self esteem crap. When I told them their grandfather was a drunk and proceeded to explain drunkenness and spousal abuse to my young children my mother came unglued. I tried to make sure they had the information they needed to grow up. There were never any taboo subjects in our house, sex, drugs, etc.. We discussed it all at such a young age there was never any feeling of embarrassment for any of us. At ten I gave Josh his first book on sex - Sexually transmitted Diseases and what you need to know.- Even I hadn't know advanced syphilis could look so bad. The book made its point and my son always practiced safe sex. I told them that if they ran away I would hunt them down and drag them home because they weren't getting out that easy, I told them if they joined a gang I would kill all the gang members and they would have nothing to belong to. I told them if they were ever strung out on drugs I would tie them up in the basement until they understood that wasn't allowed and became human again. And my all time favorite "Go ahead and call child protective services - But make sure you pack because I won't be the one moving.

I taught them honor and solidarity. To respect people who earned it and to not be anyone's pawn just because they are older, richer or hold some powerful position. I taught them to love their country in all its glory not just the rhetoric you hear today. That being an American meant you could questions the laws, that you didn't have o stand up for the pledge, go to public school or do anything just because someone wanted you to. I thought them to respect the government within its constitutional limits and to question those who abused their power. I taught them that there is in the end family, and then there is everybody else. And that family does not have to be blood but that we choose our true family as we grow. I taught them the difference between reality and fiction. I taught them how to shoot a gun, so that they would know the damage they can cause. I taught them that there is in the end no excuse and that they must take responsibility for all their own actions because I was not willing to shoulder them blame.

I gave them so many lectures (my favorite form of punishment) that they have them numbered in their heads and they know what mom and dad would think of anything they would ever try to do, or as my son summed it up after the columbine shooting when a shrink stopped him in a mall to ask him how he felt about it all. "If I did something like that my parents would stand inline to kick my ass" And he was correct.

The best three rules of parenting I ever learned are these
1. Never pick a fight you can't win
2. Have consistent rules that end in walls so that they hit something and know it when they mess up
3. Be brutally honest to yourself and them - give them reason they will understand and grow from for things you want done

Example - It is always a good thing to know where your kids are but parents are afraid to ask because the kids do their silly you don't trust me routine. Okay so maybe we don't always trust them but there are valid reason for knowing where someone is, even as an adult I rarely go anywhere that someone doesn't know about. The easiest and most honest reason you can give a child in this case and have them readily accept is that it is not a matter of trust it is a matter of emergency. If for example your father has a heart attack I need to know where you are in order to find you before I go to the hospital. (Even when my children were 16 & 17 years old I still required name address and phone number of where they were going to be)

Oh well enough parenting for one night- besides my fingers are tired and you are all probably bored reading this rant.