Showing Restraint

My oldest daughter pushed the right buttons this week that caused the higher thinking portion of my brain to kick into full gear. It was one of those requests that you know will cause horrible consequences if you make the wrong call. I became very angry when the request was made which didn’t help but the manner in which the request was made added to the response. Dropping something big and pushing for an answer is like putting out the fire with gasoline. She has a good friend in Michigan from an extremely dysfunctional single parent family that asked her to spend the night Friday for a birthday party. They talk on line all the time and on the cell on weekends. My daughter’s friend is one of 4 children by 4 fathers but only one marriage. It is a household where the telephone is disconnected every other month for non-payment and the mother actions give the appearance of being irresponsible. Of course, I hear it from the daughter’s point of view but the mother has demonstrated that I cannot trust her so it is not all one sided.

My big quandary was that the party was going to be attended by several teenage boys who live in the area. My daughter knows them and also talks to them via the computer. Attending the birthday party was not the problem but spending the night in a house where I question the responsibility of everyone who lives there is/was the issue. Who knows if the boys would try to spend the night? I trust my daughter to make the right decisions but teenage boys do not use their brains to make decisions. It is more impulse response than thought and it is them plus the lack of a responsible adult that I am concerned about.

So here I am being pushed to say yes or no to the question and I chose not to answer. I had some time to make the decision and I knew what I wasn’t going to allow. I spent the next day thinking of what I would allow and went from there. Now this is a three hour round trip with gas at $3.00 a gallon. My wife was going to Michigan on business that morning so she could drop her off. I was not going to let her spend the night but offered to pick her up at 11:00, after the party. She could invite her friend to spend the weekend at our house instead of the other way around. After some wrangling, this option was agreed upon. Now, let’s fast forward to the day before the party and the conversation between my wife and the friend’s mother. The birthday party was cancelled because her daughter was being disrespectful and she did not want to reward that kind of behavior. In the background of the phone call was a demonstration of the type of discussion that would have caused me to strip my child of any privileges. Of course respect is a two way street. You are the parent but you should show the same respect for any person, regardless of relationship. Easier said than done.

Icool

Cobb