Today one of my daughters texted me from school to let me know that she’d left her piano music at home. Since she drives straight to her lesson after school, this presented a problem.
She had done the exact same thing two weeks ago. Lucky for her, I had some errands to run in the vicinity so I grabbed her music and dropped it off on her piano teacher’s doorstep.
Because I had done that, my daughter inevitably believed that surely I could do the same this time. And, to be honest, I probably could have without too much sacrifice.
However, I declined for two reasons:
- She needed to pay some of the price of having forgotten her music for the second time in a month. If I’d swooped in and saved the day (again), she wouldn’t feel the inconvenience of having forgotten and would probably just forget again.
- I want her to understand that stay-at-home parents are people too and that one cannot assume that I am available at her beck and call.
That last one is tricky. I mean, after all, choosing to stay home to raise my children means that I AM mostly available to support them in any manner of things – from carpooling to volunteering in their schools, to attending sporting events and concerts, to welcoming them home from school, to helping them with homework, and so on.
But even though, for the most part, I CAN help her, I have to discern when helping is actually enabling.
Sometimes it takes pretending I have a full-time job away from home to back away a bit and let my kids suffer. And what really stinks about that is that they KNOW I could do it but I am choosing not to. Which inevitably makes me out to be a mean mom.
So be it. I’ve been at this parenting gig long enough that I’m practically made of steel. Today I told my beloved child that I would not be in the neighborhood to drop off her piano music. But I would be making a run to the gas station that was halfway between her school and home. She could meet me there during her lunch hour to collect the goods.
I’m sure it was a bummer to miss out on the one time during school that she actually gets to hang out with friends. But she came. And is hopefully better for it.
That seems like a fair trade off. She still got her music but had to face some sacrifice for it. We call enabling, “dysfunctional rescuing”at my school because in the end it is not helping the kid at all.
I feel SO bad for you teachers, who bear the brunt of all the “dysfunctional enabling” we parents do. Just yesterday I got a call from the school asking if I wanted to excuse another daughter’s absences at school. I didn’t know she’d been absent, so I checked in with her to see why she had missed those classes. Not satisfied with her answer, I called the school back to tell them the absences were not excused and to go ahead and exact whatever consequences are associated with that. They actually complimented me! Which says a lot about the response of the average parent nowadays. Strange that people somehow think that escaping consequences is preferable to personal growth.
👏 you are rockin’ the parenting