Be Their Axis

Remember when you were a kid and the school playground had those carousels that you would sit on and see how fast you could go before you couldn't take it anymore? The best was when somebody had a parent or older sibling there to spin it and make it go faster than any 9-year-old could muster.

The trick to not getting dizzy was to focus on the spot in the middle of the toy. By focusing on the axis instead of the world blurred by speed around you, you didn't fall victim to the chaos.

Fast forward 35 years.

As you pour the kids their cereal before school, little Suzy is asking why she can't have a cell phone. All of the other 4th graders have one. Little Greg is still mad that you didn't let him stay up till 11 last night to watch all of WWE, insisting that all of the other kids in his class are allowed to stay up late and watch the whole thing. Why are you so mean? How did they end up with the meanest mom in the world?

As a parent, it is no fun having to tell your kids no. It sucks having to be the bad guy. But you know what is even worse? Raising little children with no boundaries that grow into big children with no boundaries that grow into adults that don't know how to make the right choices. Right now the argument may be about bedtime, which isn't a matter of life and death, but as kids grow, so does the gravity of the choices and situations they face.

In a few years, it isn't going to be WWE little Greg wants, it will be an unsupervised party at a classmate's house. Little Suzy won't be asking about a cell phone, she is asking about a nose ring. And you will say no. You will be that axis that keeps them steady when the world is spinning around them.

I was raised by strict parents. I always had a curfew. I had to quit cross country in 8th grade when my grades slipped. I was always held accountable. When I went away to college, my mom called me one day. She was upset. Somebody had told her I was doing drugs and acting recklessly. (It was a scorned ex-boyfriend trying to trick my parents into making me come home.) I told my mom that she spent 18 years teaching me right from wrong. Two months at college hadn't erased that.

I was steady because they had always been.

Now I have five kids, and man, I see how fast that carousel is going that they are on. I see it in a way I couldn't when I was the one riding. I see the stress, I see the peer pressure, I see the choices they have. I have to be a mean mom quite often, and that is ok. Childhood goes by so quickly, and what we do now as parents sets them up for how they live the rest of their lives. Sometimes it will hurt us more than them when we have to tell them no, but we tell them no anyway, because we are that unwavering center.

We make the tough decisions because we love them.

It is us - the moms, the dads, the grandparents - that are the solid, steady, constant axis on their short and fast spin around childhood.