Independence

[pegkerr]

I have had some interesting talks with my sister Betsy over this past holiday season about parenting. Betsy has always been my parenting mentor, and she has talked a lot about transitioning to the empty nest stage (she has four boys, the youngest of whom is sixteen).

I have been thinking a great deal, as a result, of the fact that Fiona will (hopefully!) be leaving for college in just four short years. When I think of it, it just seems so hard to believe, but Betsy assures me that the time will fly by. Fiona is on the smaller side, compared to her peers, but the top of her head already reaches up to my eyebrows. When we got together this past holiday, I was thunderstruck to realize that Leigh, my brother Chet's daughter, six months younger than Fiona, is already taller than me.

So I talked with Betsy a lot about what is involved in helping kids getting ready to leave the nest. Betsy said that her husband Greg is particularly good about this, pressing her kids to become independent decision makers as quickly as possible. In her experience, (with boys) when they are getting ready to leave, they do it by becoming extremely withdrawn, barely ever even speaking to her (the closed oyster stage, she jokes). She has heard from her friends who have girls that conversely girls as they get older sometimes enter the getting-ready-to-leave-stage by continually picking fights with their parents, so by the time their senior year of high school rolls around, parents are sometimes just relieved that they are leaving the house, just to get rid of them.

So I asked Betsy what she has done to move her kids toward independence. She answered that by this age, all her kids were doing their own laundry. I've talked with Fiona, and we're going to institute that, too. She said that all her boys had to get summer jobs at the age of sixteen, and we will be doing that, too. I have opened an account for Fiona for depositing her babysitting money, and I've showed her how to balance her statements; this account is what she will be using to start saving for college (half of everything she earns now goes into this account).

We will probably give her a quarterly clothing allowance when she gets into high school, so she will have to budget and make decisions about what to buy herself.

[One thing I really appreciated about growing up in Illinois was that by law, I had to take a course in high school, a basic consumer awareness course: how to balance a checkbook, what the fine language on credit card agreements meant, how to analyze a commercial, how to read the ingredients list on food packaging, and what I particularly remembered and appreciate, how to recognize a scam. How I wish that other states were enlightened enough to require all students to take such a course. I will probably look for something like this through a community ed program for Fiona.]

What started me thinking about making this entry last night was that we had a situation arise where Fiona got invited to a sleepover by a friend, and then later learned that a confirmation retreat was being held that same weekend. The confirmation teacher has said that if they miss the retreat, they have to make arrangements to make up the work. I was mindful of my conversation with Betsy, and so instead of ordering Fiona by fiat, "You're going to the retreat," I told her that she had to talk with the confirmation leader, telling him of the conflict, and decide on her own what to do.

This is your chance, friends list: for once I am genuinely asking for advice here! Grab the opportunity! Or at least, tell me about your own personal experience, both growing up yourself or (if pertinent) your experience as a parent. What lessons do you think a kid needs to know before being ready to venture out into the world? How do you teach them? What did your parents do when you were moving into high school to help you become independent to leave for college? In what ways did they not prepare you enough? Parents, what are you doing now to ease the transition of your highschooler kids into adulthood? What did you learn on your own despite your parents?

minnehaha K.? cakmpls? Anyone?

Comments

[dragonpaws.livejournal.com]

I guess, from my own experience, one thing I would not do is say "Well, you're growing up and we want you to be independent, so we're going to make you do X, Y and Z." This both sends the wrong message about growing up AND undermines the person's independence. My parents made that mistake, and it was very confusing for me to be told on one hand that I was growing up and should start taking on adult responsibilities and doing adult things, but on the other hand I had to do all these adult things because my parents were telling me to. Explaining why certain things (a job, a bank account, saving for college) are important, laying out the steps to achieve them, and then letting the child make the choice seems to me to be the best way to encourage both the beginnings of taking an adult place in the world, and taking responsibility for oneself. Of course, if the kid has no interest in any of this, you may eventually need to move on to more robust "out of the nest" techniques, but there's no reason to start with them.

I think kids naturally want to start achieving independence (not all, but most) and the important thing for parents is to pay attention to their own reactions to their kid's behavior. Because the child will behave differently as they reach for independence, but if you don't behave differently as well, you're sending contradictory messages. That seemed to be the most difficult thing for my parents-- their mouths said "grow up" but they responded to my moves toward independence as though I was still a kid. This doesn't come up as much in the "getting a job, saving money" area, but the first time your child comes to you with a thoughtful, considered decision or opinion and you find you completely disagree... it can be very easy to just swat them down with "Parents know best." And you may be right! But you can't ask a child to start taking on adult responsibilities and growing in outward independence without also allowing them some freedom to make their own choices and giving them the VERY important experience of doing something Mom and Dad Didn't Agree With. That way, you're teaching them to trust their own judgment AND that it's safe to be honest with you even if they expect you will disagree with them. You're also clarifying the difference between "Behaviors and ideas that we disagree on" and "Things that are actually really bad to do," which can be very helpful since, as a young child, these things are not so well differentiated since the parents are the guiding authority in both realms. And, of course, the child then gets the valuable experience of dealing with the consequences of an action that seemed like the best thing to do at the time, and for which they are entirely responsible since they chose not to heed parental advice.

This is all from the perspective of someone who just graduated from college last year, so it's fresh in my mind! One last thing that I'd like to add, is that especially for your oldest child, it's important to realize, and have them realize, what leaving for college means. I don't think I, or my mother, really realized that when I left for college, I was essentially leaving home for good. I came back for breaks and some summers, but I didn't live there anymore. You may have a better handle on this, since you went to college and had that experience yourself, but I still feel a strange lack of closure, like I left home one day on an errand and came back to find that everybody had moved away. It's a hard thing to learn, but it can, paradoxically, make a person perform even better in college and work even harder to establish the important relationships and develop the important skills they'll need for later life, because college isn't a temporary change in life circumstances... it's the start of something totally new and the end of something older.

Just my two cents. :)

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

These are two good cents :-) The sort of - transparency, I guess - that you advocate would have been useful to me. We had a rapist in the area when I was about 14, too. My mom said years later that they were just starting to give me more freedom when they had to limit it because of him. But I never saw the "more freedom" part (maybe I blinked), just the rules about not being out alone after dark, even to the mall three blocks away. It wasn't horribly onerous because they were much more relaxed about things like letting me stay out late at parties (if they knew the parents and knew I had a safe ride home) but still, if I'd known the reasoning and seen the changes, I would have been more inclined to believe them when they said that they "trusted me, just not everyone else".