TheBanyanTree: A Parent- Damned If You Do...

[NancyIee at aol.com]

In a message dated 3/16/06 9:32:58 AM Eastern Standard Time, scotrace at mac.com 
writes:
Kids need challenges. Sam has been completely sheltered and protected all his 
life. Some of us have had more than our share of childhood struggles, hurdles 
and difficulties to overcome. But I think a kid needs those things to give 
strength to temperament. Let them fall down. It's so hard, but sometimes, they 
have to bleed a little without your help.
Or when the first small bump in the road appears, the whole world caves in. 
TRUE!

We parents love our children to distraction, and want them to have it better 
than er did, which means watching over them, protecting them. Micro-managing 
parenthood.  My parents let us kids bike the six blocks to the town lake to 
play in the playground with opther kids, and bike home afterward.  I let my own 
kids, living rural as we did, bike or ride horses to visit friends.  It was a 
safer world, or rather, the media didn't shake to death the many crimes against 
kids and lone walkers.

Nowadays, everyone knows everything that goes on: registered child molestors 
and sex crime perps, and they are scared about letting their kids out of their 
sight.

I don't mean to imply that children should not be watched and protected. I'm 
an over-protective mom, always have been, am still, though my kids are no 
longer kids.  But, they DO need to make their own mistakes.  They need to learn 
their own lessons.  It's a tough world, knowing when to step back and when to 
step in.

I hope that Sam will eventually realize that life isn't always fair or 
perfect.  Crap happens.  We have the strength to overcome if we only realize it, and 
use it.  Sam is valuable and worthwhile, and much needed in this world.  And, 
there are so many wonderful adventures and, yes, hurts, ahead of him.  He 
will find love, and maybe lose it, but he will know there is love to be had.  He 
will lose friends and make others. He will work for jerks but make a go of it 
anyway.  He will fail, but in another zone, he will win.  Life is not a new 
car or hospital-clean house. Nor is it poverty and grime.  It is everything.

My kids had a good, safe childhood.  They are watching over their own with 
balance, I feel.  One is looking for a new job, another just broke up from a 
long-term relationship, another just annnounced an engagemant.  One just tiold me 
he is joinging a bike-a-thon for charity, five hundred miles cross country.  
Do I fear for him?  On some level, yes. But he is, on this level,  a man, I 
have to let him go his own way.

Good luck to Sam.  Know that there are others out there who appreciate him 
and wish him well, as he is.


NancyLee