No, this isn't going to be an essay on babies having babies or the pros and cons of teen pregnancy.
This is a little different and starts off as a fairly innocuous question: If you have/had children, what facet of your upbringing do you hope you emulate your parents on and what do you hope you do not emulate? Simpler put, in what ways do you hope to live to your parent's example and where do you hope to not repeat the mistakes?
My first gut reaction on what I plan to never do is use food as a consistent ploy in a system of rewards and punishment. The only time I would do that is relative to a meal itself. Meaning, "Because you told I lie I'm not going to let you have dinner." The last thing a girl should do is sit in her room dwelling over hunger than what she did wrong. Why? Because that eventually becomes a relationship of food being the goal and comfort. Don't ask a girl to sit in her room saying, "If I had dinner, I'd feel better and it would mean my parent's aren't mad at me." Take away TV, take away a play date, ground her but don't create a cause/effect relationship with food. However, you don't give dessert when all she ate were fries and mayonnaise.
But then I thought, "OK, I have a bad relationship with food because of that, as does my sister, but is that really the biggest thing?" I thought about a guy I know and some of the mistakes he's made in his life and I had asked myself, "Does a person who makes a mistake in their life deserve to live without love, compassion, a wife and child?" Well, if that person is a murderer, pedophile or an abuser I would say, frankly, yes. They probably would only benefit from a healthy relationship with a prison guard and a team of psychiatrists.
But then I asked myself why I would even ask that question? That's when I realized the greatest gift my parents gave me, without balance, is my greatest flaw.
So lets start with the good so we can understand the bad. My parents raised me with possibly the highest level of integrity and ethics a normal girl could ever have. That equated to accountability. From my earliest memory, my parents never once allowed me to get by something I did wrong because I was "merely two" or only in 1st grade, or a silly teenager. I was held accountable for my mistakes and had to hold myself accountable. That has made me someone who is painfully honest - though of course I have what is considered private and I've done bad things out of hurt or stress. But it's gotten me very far in my career - I always know that when something bad happens, I had a hand in it. By being accountable, my bosses and even my friends know that while I might thunderstorm a while, I will own up. I don't blame someone else, ever.
But at work this week, my team was fractured and deeply broken. So my boss had a "come to Jesus" meeting and the fracture was between M and I. That fracture hurt both of us deeply because we had been so close. So close that we were referred to as an old married couple. So W asked M, "Do you think she works hard enough?" and M got choked up and said, "Of course, obviously. Look at her. Anyone who puts that much pressure on herself can't be doing anything but working too hard." W, whose opinion I deeply value, turned to me and told me he felt the same way. That I don't allow the pressure I feel to rest on other shoulders, on his much stronger shoulders.
So when I took all these thoughts, pulled them together and realized that accountability - taken too far - can kill your relationships with other people.
While my parents worked tirelessly to raise two thoughtful, honest, ethical, moral daughters, I can see in my sister and myself that we didn't learn where to draw the line. Without giving it any thought, I'd say we got that from my mother. When I did something wrong, she would hold me accountable for it relentlessly - and I often felt that when she finally stopped being angry it wasn't because she was satisfied I learned my lesson but rather because she arbitrarily chose to stop being angry. As I consider my later childhood/teenage years, I realize my father grew to be that way as well. And I realize now, I will prosecute someone or even worse yet
myself for mistakes until I
choose to let it go, because somehow I didn't learn when enough is enough. But maybe I can learn because what is the point of holding yourself accountable if you can never emerge from that and move on? I've literally held myself and others back because I couldn't focus on what being accountable really means.
So, yes, I will hold my children accountable. But I will also teach them that once they undertand that it's time to forgive others and forgive yourself and move on, leave the hurt and anger in your wak...and take with you only what you can't leave behind.
