I’ve met so many people who genuinely believe that parenting is about making their children happy and it really scares me.  Parenting is about assisting children with their growth: physical, emotional, intellectual, personal and spiritual.  The concept of physical health with the component of good nutrition is an easy concrete concept, but the concepts of emotional and personal growth seem to be difficult ones for parents to grasp.  Often, the parents I meet are all about making their children “happy”.  They buy all of the latest cool stuff, they transport to all of the sports, choir, club events, and they sacrifice, sacrifice and go into debt – to be the best parent.  There is a lot of hard work involved in making a kid “happy.”  I’m sorry but I see this as ego serving for the parent rather than parenting.

When it comes to the concrete concept of physical health, everyone seems to understand that potato chips, dip and canned sodas are bad for you – I’m sure it doesn’t change alot of behavior – but still everyone at least undersands the concept.  Personal growth seems to be a mystery to most parents.  Basic ideas like, children must learn that there are consequences for actions, seem to be overlooked by a lot of parents.  There is a reason for this, many parents today want more than anything to be “liked” by their children and they equate being liked with saying yes.  This is a terrible mistake.  It’s part and parcel to the economic hardship we face today.  It leads to empty consumerism which has no good ending.

I think parents do this because they don’t want to face the consequences for saying no.  Children punish their parents when their parents say no.  This is negative reinforcement, because parents will jump through financial, emotional and mental hoops just to keep their child happy, to keep their child from exhibiting bad behavior because the child cannot have their way.  How unfortunate.  These children will not understand the conepts of coping or discipline, they make poor workers in the work force and they invariable struggle terribly with college.  They just never got external discipline and internal discipline is an elusive concept for them.  If you want your child to have personal growth, to grow emotionally and mentally, you must allow disappointment, sadness and responsibility to play a significant role in your parenting of them.   You must pay attention to their development and increase expectations as they get older.  A child of 6 should have a habit of brushing teeth daily and that habit should be well ingrained.  A child of 8 should expect to complete homework on a regular basis, possibly not independently, but surely it is part of the routine.

The flip side of this is that true parenting takes quite a bit of work, certainly more personal, emotional and mental work than the “yes” parenting approach.  It is work – that perhaps is unexpected or unclear.  But the old cliche that children do not come with directions is quite untrue.  Barnes & Noble and Borders and any other bookstore on the planet will bear witness to that.  When I was very young I went to the same parenting class twice, just in case I didn’t get it the first time.  I’ve often wondered why those classes are not packed.  Parenting is a tedious and arduous process and it is not for the cowards of the world – if parenting is to be done well, it must be done with effort and courage.  Some times parenting is completely unpleasant, if for no other reason than because your teenage daughter wants to go out on a date when she is 14 and she hates you because you know better than to allow it.  Parenting is unpleasant because it is easier to do the dishes myself than to make the kids do them and teach them – very carefully – how to do a good job.  Kids don’t want to do a good job, after all you are making them complete an unpleasant task.

While we cannot ask them to have awareness of electricity bills, we can carefully explain the financial and ecological cost of energy.  We can require our children to behave appropriately by turning off lights when they leave a room.  We cannot ask them to have awareness of the world of business, but we can require them to act politely to others at school and to perform work that is age appropriate for them.

To “make children happy” is a slippery slope that ends with ineffective and undisciplined young adults who are doomed to failure because of their own inability to cope with disappointment, perform quality work and to be responsive to other peoples needs.  Perhaps you know some adults like these – and though their parents made a valiant effort to “make them happy”, they never learned to be responsible for themselves and that – that is a tragedy.

Our lives and relationships intertwine, affect each other and all.  Sometimes I forget that each and every little thing is important and has an impact.  I find myself at this time, learning multiple lessons from multiple relationships of mine – that though superficially – do not impact each other, certainly impact me.  In July, 36 years ago, I met the then 3 year old Jill Patricia.  I claimed her as my own.  My marriage to her father was brief, but my love for Jill lingered.  In those halcyon days Van Morrison’s song “My Brown Eyed Girl” was Jill’s song.  Throughout these many years Jill and I have maintained our relationship.  I continued to be involved in raising her, participating in all of those motherly decisions that are part of the process, driver’s license acquisition, medical care decisions and later, I held her tightly when her father passed away.  In my mind, she has always been my eldest child.  As a mother, I have developed many talents, as a woman, many more.  One of these talents is trust and faith in my intuition.  I always know when something is “going on” or “wrong” with my kids.  Though I did not give birth to Jill, somehow that primal maternal instinct has covered her.  So last week when I heard the song “Brown Eyed Girl” twice – in the span of two weeks – I knew I needed to talk to Jill.

Nineteen years ago, Jill and I had our very worst argument and it was because I refused to accept her adult decisions.  I wanted her to go to college and “become” something, she rejected a scholarship to Penn State and instead, decided to get married to her high school sweetheart.  The argument was bitter and it cost me dearly – as I did not attend the wedding, I was not invited.  Almost two years passed before her father died and during that time I had no contact with Jill and my heart hurt the entire time.  It was a lesson in how to love your adult kids, nothing is worth losing them.

Yet, I did not learn the entire lesson.  So many things have contributed to where I am now and what is going on with my kids at this moment in time.  In the intervening years between Jill’s father and now, I have many more children, all from different directions.  I gave birth to four, adopted one and fostered another.  I did all of this in the cozy comfort of a generous husband and a loving and supportive mother.  Eventually my marriage did not work and my mother passed away.  My now ex-husband, though angry and short-sighted, continued to care for his children and love them.  He was not very good at expressing love and would often say to me, “You take care of that and then call me and tell me what they need and I will get it for them.”  The negotiations were often intense and at one point, I chose out and told him “you do your own talking with the kids!”  I was always positive that he loved them dearly, but was just retarded about expressing that love.  Lesson number two: you have what you have, work with it.

My younger kids father passed away 2 and 1/2 years ago and that is what I like to call “family interrupted.”  He was too young to die, but he did it anyway with his first and only heart attack.  Now my mother is gone and my kids fathers are gone and I am alone and trying to figure things out.  Now, I have all of these grown kids who are wandering, also trying to figure things out.

So last year, I find myself in an un-tenable situation.  My career is on stall, my boss – well, I won’t go down that road.  My relationship on the rocks and generally I had allowed myself to slide into a very large unhappiness.  My life was not WORKING.  It showed, it did not help that menopause set in with a vengeance.  But mostly, I just found myself incredibly alone and lonely.  There are all of these adult kids, I can’t help them, I always let their dad take care of matters financial and I was lost in a sea of grief and frustration.  Once again, I am mentally separated from Jill and she is too busy to contact me.  Her oldest child is finishing her senior year and going to college and her youngest is moving into high school.

I did what anyone would do and I changed everything.  Indeed, I was at Barnes & Noble and read a quote from a book that said “If things are changing, change Everything!”  So I did.  I looked for and applied for jobs anywhere and everywhere and I actually found one (which is amazing) and I took it!  I packed up my entire house, put it into a 26′ truck and left Florida and moved to Virginia.

Now here’s the psychic karma lesson:  I have one person left in this entire world who not only loves me, but is capable of loving and supporting me; and that is my sister.  My kids love and support me, but that is very different.  My sister listens when I tell her about my kids and she genuinely cares about them and what I have to say.  She is my last adult refuge.  She has taught me so MANY important lessons.  There are so many variations of thinking wrongly that it is difficult to count.

So my sister decides to help me with the move, and as a vacation, she accompanies us.  In Georgia, I have a melt-down and I cannot drive, then the following day, in South Carolina, I REALLY have a melt down and my son who is driving the truck goes to get my sister, who is driving my car and she comes to get me because I am weeping.  I cannot believe that I have taken my entire life apart and endeavored to take this journey to a new state, a new job and to be alone again.  Finally the source of my anxiety erupts to the surface and I admit that alone, I am not enough of a parent for my kids.  I can’t possibly fulfill what they need from parents.  I tell her that since Travis died, I cannot make up for all that is missing from my kids lives.  And my sister says to me “You can’t possibly go through life stumbling from one death to the next, waiting for the next death and hurting all the way through.”  Somehow what she says soothes me and we are able to continue our journey.

And then, I don’t know why, and I don’t know how, but I become frustrated with my sister.  And I am frustrated with her in the same way that I was frustrated with Jill 19 years ago.  I disrespected her life decisions, I want her to do something different than what she is doing and I want her to be something different than what she is being.  So here is where I am now beginning to get the full lesson that was available 19 years ago: acceptance.  Both women, my step-daughter Jill, my sister Becky made life decisions that geographically separated them from me.  In some ways, these decisions also made them psychically different than me.  Because I love them intensely, I want their psyches to lead them down the same path that I am on and at the same pace.  In retrospect, how crazy and in other ways, how selfish.  So that is how life lessons will come back to haunt you.  I did not learn full acceptance 19 years ago when I argued with Jill over her life decisions, I clung to my idea of how the world should operate and it polluted my relationship with the only person that I have left who supports me in my role as parent.   Becky is also the one who loves me unconditionally and is genuinely happy to hear me and talk to me.

I am lucky that I did not lose Jill for good.  I am also very lucky that Becky’s love for me is steadfast even in the face of my own self-centeredness.  Full circle, I must find acceptance in my heart for ALL of my loved one’s decisions, allow my kids to be who they are, make the mistakes and yes, I will get hurt, but with any luck and a lot of work, I can maintain the relationships.  I need to find this acceptance in my heart for every relationship that I have.  I must, it is myself who suffers when I reject another’s life.  I have found Jill again, indeed I am now only 5 hours away from her, we are making plans for Christmas, YAY.  I now rejoice in the choices that she made that have brought us here.  Similarly I rejoice in Becky’s choices.  I take the lesson from Travis and I work with what I have.  Life is not about what I want other people to do and be for me.  I am a lucky woman.  And all of those kids I have?  They are great adults who are finding their way, they are loving and handsome people who make their own choices, all of whom have  a mother who will accept and honor their decisions.