I’ve never claimed to be a perfect parent, nor do I have all of the answers. Quite the opposite. I learn something new every single day, and I very much enjoy this learning process; most of the time. I constantly question my decisions, behavior, and worry about my children’s future. What parent doesn’t?

One thing I like to remind my children of, is that I am NOT their friend. I’m not a “cool” parent. We are not homies, BFFs, or anything of the sort. It is my job, duty rather, to raise them to be self-sufficient, contributing adults. I give them the tools, show them how to use them, and hope I don’t fuck it up too much in the process.

Everyone living in my household contributes in some way. My husband and I split bills, I grocery shop and clean, he does outside projects/maintenance, and we both do laundry. Age appropriate chores are assigned to the kids. Each child is responsible for maintaining their living space. We don’t do allowance. There’s a meme floating around about “Allowance, what allowance? You’re allowed to live here!” I’m sure you’ve seen it.  We go a bit more in depth than that. The chores they execute daily are just the normal part of us functioning as a unit. They do have options to ask to earn money for extra chores performed, or projects. These options have a monetary value assigned, so they can even pick and choose which they would like to accomplish. This has helped them learn about the value of both time and money. This wasn’t how we did things initially, however. Initially, we started with a chore chart for money one summer and did not assign the normal chores. That lasted a few weeks before we realized if given the option, the kids would readily pass up opportunities for cash to avoid doing dishes and dusting. Parent lesson learned!

Pre-COVID, the children had started to ride the bus to and from school. I was super happy about this, since it meant I no longer had to pay for wrap around care, nor did I have to rush to drop them off in the mornings. I helped the first week to get them into a new routine: waking up, making beds, brushing teeth, and eating breakfast. They were doing exceptionally well. I would wake them everyday, at the same time, and once they we up and getting around, I would leave.

One day I received a phone call from our eldest daughter ( she’s 21 and staying here temporarily). The kids had missed the bus to school and her car wouldn’t start.  I had just pulled into a parking spot. I drove back home, only a 15 minute drive, and took them to school. I asked why they had missed the bus, and of course was hit with the normal responses of “It’s his fault, he was too slow eating breakfast.” “No, it was her, she was in her room when the bus came.”.

I got back to work and started contemplating how we could address them missing the bus. I came up with a few options and discussed it with my husband( we make it a point to almost always discuss and approach as a cohesive unit). When I arrived home from work that day we set them down and first explained to them that blaming one another for what happened wasn’t a valid excuse. They both were responsible for missing the bus, and they failed to work together to make sure that didn’t happen. We are huge advocates for our children helping and supporting one another. Not that they aren’t going to have disagreements. Eventually, someday, they may work with people they don’t get along with, and they need to learn the skills now to cope with those situations/people and still complete tasks and work together to accomplish goals. Pointing fingers rarely leads to success. Additionally, I charged my children for 2 hours of my time. I explained to them I am paid an hourly rate, and that each of them owed me, equally, for the pay I missed because I had to return home to take them to school. Again, they got to choose the chores they did and performed them, in addition to normal chores, after school each day until I was paid in full. They have yet to miss the bus again.

We don’t run a boot camp style household. We don’t yell and scream. Okay…my Husband would tell you I DO on occasion yell, but he’d also say it was warranted.  He’s also not opposed to telling one of our children that they are being an “asshole”, should they need it. This has gotten us some strange looks from family members on occasion. We have set standards and expectations. The above is obviously not an all inclusive picture of our parenting style, but it’s a portion of it.

Back to the “holding their hand part”: by all means, hold their hands. Hold their hand when you walk in public. Hold their hand when you snuggle on the couch. Hold their hand as often as you want. But figuratively speaking, all the hand holding in the world won’t help mold them into adolescents or adults who understand accountability and recognize that there are consequences for their actions. If a kid fucks up and makes a poor decision, there needs to be a consequence! Let me rephrase…there MUST be a consequence! It’s imperative to their development. Severity of the consequence should align with the severity of the offense.

It’s our mission for our children to not only comprehend accountability but be able to hold themselves accountable. I want them to grow up and know what holding other people accountable looks like too. This means my husband and I hold each other accountable as well and share that, to some extent, with our children.

Holding them accountable does not mean you can’t be loving, affectionate, and nurturing. I know I am. I go above and beyond to let my children know they are loved. We encourage them to be open with us, which means we need to be approachable. We encourage them to tell the truth and recognize when they have made a mistake and how to take ownership of it. Which means we too need to be honest and take ownership. As parents we need to be the example, even with the little day to day stuff. Building this foundation now may help in the future when the little stuff isn’t so little anymore; just like our kids.