A new chapter in my life.

My life has been changed today in so many ways, by one little event...my teenage daughter got her driver's license!!  I have been waiting, wanting, wishing, for this day to come for so long now (she is over 17, so that means I have been waiting even longer than first planned) and now that the day has finally arrived, I am so scared!!  I never thought that this milestone in my child's life would be cause for so much concern.  I have to say right now that my mother wasn't as crazy as we all thought she was when we were teenagers!  I will apologize here and now for all the times we did not call home as soon as we arrived at our destination!  If this is how I am feeling about my daughter getting her license, how in the world am I going to feel when she moves out on her own??  I don't think I can think about that and this in the same day! 

Natalie is just itching to get out and drive too...only problem is that her car (that she bought for $500 cash) is sitting in a snowbank, needs an inspection (because it's an '84) and needs some insurance and registration (and Greg wants her to take a drivers training course before that all happens), so that means that she will have to drive my vehicle!!  She is stoked about this of course!  I have an 8 passenger Ford Expedition - decked out with 3 carseats and 3 booster seats - as well as an IPod jack, great bass, heated seats, command start, power everything...you get the picture.  Her car on the other hand has a gas tank hidden behind the license plate, nothing power, the old cigarette lighter that actually creates fire, smells like old people (I am quoting Natalie), and no IPod jack!!  Somehow she feels that she shouldn't have to drive the kind of vehicle that she bought, she should for some reason, be able to drive a vehicle like mine!  Where does this sense of entiltlement come from?

I have thought about the entitlement issue a lot lately as I see so many young people acting in ways that scream "I am entitled to everything I want", including my very own daughter.  I was watching Dr. Phil last week and they had on a family with a very troubled teenager.  Dr. Phil said something so profound that I have been thinking about it every day since.  What he said was something like this: We (parents/adults) wonder why the children are acting the way they are, but don't think about the fact that we were the ones who raised them (to be that way).  I am not sure how he said it exactly, but it as along those lines.  Obviously, children are not born knowing their manners, boundries, expectations, etc., so we as their parents have raised them with those things in mind...but somewhere along the way we also gave our children the idea that they are equal to us.  I say this as a parent of a 17 year old girl, not someone who is looking into the window of a world I haven't lived yet.  I too take responsibilty for making the teenagers of this world so incredibly self-centered and narcassistic.  Here is the big question we all need to ask oursleves, especially those parents who are raising younger children right now (myself included): what are we planning on doing about it? 

I have said it before, but I have a very unique perspective on parenting (kind of like Michelle Dugger), I have one child who is graduating and beginning to make plans as an adult while I have three other kids who are just starting their schooling, and even one still in diapers (that issue is a whole other blog post though, and thank goodness he is not one of the ones in school yet!  LOL).  What I didn't know then, or thought I knew, and now know differently, I have the second chance so many parents will never get...and I bet my dollar most of you with grown children are saying "thank God I don't have diapers to change on one kid while I am buying a grad dress for another kid"!  That is my reality though, because while I myself was buying a grad dress I had a child in diapers!!  I am not sure where we, as parents of teenagers and young adults, went wrong with raising our kids, but somewhere along the line something changed.  Was it when they said spanking your child will ruin their lives?  Was it when they decided to give a medal to each kid in the soccer tournament...even if they lost?  Was it when they said we should use positive statements instead of saying "no" or "don't" when disciplining our kids?  Was it when they started to run Treehouse T.V. 24 hours per day?  Was it when we would decided as a society that it was not safe to let our children leave our sights for more than 10 seconds, because a bad guy is always lurking in the bushes?  Was there one event in our world or society that made us go off track?  Are we really off track, or have the kids of this world always been this way but I am just noticing it now?  I know that I was not raised to belive that I was equal to my parents and that if I wanted something, I worked and saved until I had enough to buy it myeslf. 

They say it takes a village to raise a child, I say it only takes a parent.

SJ