Daddy's Money

She's got her daddy's money
Her mama's good looks
More laughs than a stack of comic books
A wild imagination
A college education
Add it all up, it's a deadly combination
- Ricochet

My Baby Girl was telling me about the person she was interning with. His parents wanted to send him to a language immersion boarding school at age 11. Boarding schools were the norm in his country, but he objected to the language immersion. He told them he refused to go. They insisted as his parents they knew best and he must listen to them. He told them if they sent him, he would break all the windows he possibly could on his first day there. The school would either expel him or give him another chance. If the school gave him another chance, he would break any remaining windows at which point they most certainly would expel him and he would never get into another boarding school. His parents decided not to send him. My daughter did not consider this very good advertising for having children.

While each of my children have presented their own parenting challenges, it seems to me that she has been my most strong willed of the three, although to a less violent degree than her mentor. "No, I will NOT join the National Honor Society!!!" and other such statements were not uncommon. She thought up activities her sisters never would have, constantly kept us on our toes with her activities, and continues to do so.

One area where my husband and I are strong partners is our parenting. Not that we have always made the best parenting choices - after all, no one gives you a manual - but we do have certain areas where we strongly agree, and I think this has been key. The first is that we believe in helping our kids channel their personality traits constructively. This has been key over and over and over (and I have been fortunate enough to build an entire school on this philosophy). It meant that when my middle daughter demanded a lot of physical attention, then we looked for socially acceptable ways for her to do that at each stage of her growing up so she didn't seek it in unacceptable ways. It meant when my oldest daughter acknowledged her perfectionist traits, we helped her look at careers where that was an asset.

We've also always tried to ask ourselves what our end goal is in any situation - and keep focused on that rather than the short term. That's why when my Baby Girl insisted the NHS was stupid, we were able to come back at her with the reasoning that we wanted some stand-out listings on her college applications and give her a list of what we saw as options rather than get in a battle over NHS. It's an adult version of....You have to wear socks, do you want the red socks or the blue socks? Parenting this way minimizes a lot of the teenage battles we know our friends had. It also lays the ground work to discuss with kids why some choices are better than others, thinking through options, etc.

And the last thing we did was tag-teaming. When one of us was better suited to deal with a situation, we acknowledged that and took the lead. Or, when one of us had reached our limit, we acknowledged that too and took over for the other one. Sometimes we were able to realize that limit before things escalated. Other times, maybe not so much. But it was huge to be able to do that for each other.

So my take on this is that when children give us challenges growing up, if we as parents invest in them and support them and nurture their strong will (instead of medicating them) these are the children who will grow up to have the most impact on this world. I can look at my Baby Girl's mentor and know that somewhere along the way, his parents did something very right.