“The chains of habit are generally too small to be felt until they are too strong to be broken”
Samuel Johnson
For Family Night tonight, my Guy was the Director.
I always love it when it is his turn, because I never know what he is going to come up with exactly or the way he will choose to position things with the kids.
I think he did a fine job tonight.
His subject was a really, really tough one to say the least.
He spoke about Addiction.
Addiction to drugs, to alcohol, to smoking, to gambling, to biting your nails, to technology. He spoke of important things and how our bodies and brains are connected.
I like the type of dialogue we are creating with our children of open communication where we share with them our own obstacles and our challenges from our own lives and also the smart and good decisions that we have made.
There are a few things we insist on from our children and communicating with us is one of them.
We want them to come to us and we can help them if they feel peer pressured. We can teach them to keep a beer in their hand and add water to it so no one fills it up again and pressures them to have another. We can teach them ways to stand up to friends and make their own choices. We can be there for them if they get into situations that we will not be pleased about and assure them that the most important thing that matter s to us is their safety.
We are the type of parents that would pick up our child in a heartbeat if they were drunk (even though they were not allowed to drink) and shut our mouths and not say a word and just be thrilled they called for a lift. We will gladly shut our mouths any day of the week and give up any rules if our kids make safe choices.
I fundamentally disagree with imposing strict and rigid rules on teenagers when it comes to drinking, sex, smoking etc. I think it always backfires and mostly ensures that the kids do it anyways behind our backs and carry loads of guilt with them for a lifetime.
I do believe in empowering kids to make choices that are good for their health, their safety and well being.
So it was a heavy night. Chase especially looked weighted down by it all. Distraught. Disturbed by our candor and honesty. I realized that we have been treating him younger than he is. It’s time for us to talk to him more often of what is likely surrounding him in his life at school.
I was proud of my Guy tonight. He did an amazing job of opening up a channel of communication with our three children that was not there before.
It’s gonna be an interesting decade.
