Does It Really Take The Village?

I was reading Mike's post about parents dumping their kids at the mall as a baby sitter and how the parents should be held accountable for their children's aberrant behavior.

I tend to agree with what Mike said, but I have to give credence to my own personal experience, as the mother of a teenager, to his post.

My son was such a sweet and well behaved child (and still is) while growing up. I love that kid like nobody's business and I have raised him all by myself, no father, no nanny, no regular babysitter.

I had to work when he was young, in fact I had to quit school to raise him. I don't regret my decision to keep him when I found myself pregnant at 19. I wish I had been older and through college when that little oops happened, but I made the very best of a difficult situation.

I had so much stress while he was young. I know I wasn't the best mother (I had never been one before ya know!), but there was no mother in the world who loved her child more. His sweet little face and adorable laugh just made my heart practically burst with love all the time.

Being a single mom to my son he became very attached to me. I was young and stupid and still wanted to have fun, so a couple of weekends a month I would spend Saturday night out with the girls or on a date. I learned early on not to bring men around my son. Before you go thinking I had one night stands while he in the house just wipe that from your mind! I would never have done that to him. Just thinking of doing that makes me feel dirty, filthy. But, when I would start dating someone new I learned to keep my son and my boyfriend apart. They might have met each other, but they didn't spend time together. My thoughts were, if this relationship I'm in gets serious then I'll bring them together. In other words, if the relationship didn't have staying power, the two never met. Hence, my son never really met anyone I dated in his 16 years until Mr. D, whom we now live with.

Maybe I did him a disservice by keeping him isolated from my dating life, but I like to think I protected him from heart ache should the relationship have died. He wouldn't be attached to anyone he would never see again. I didn't want him grieving because of my stupidity.

As he entered middle school I started noticing that his personality was changing some. He started sleeping more, to which I attributed puberty and a growth spurt. He never would do his homework no matter how much I would take his things away from him or ground him. In fact, he started failing or barely scraping by in his classes. I got calls from his teachers and counselors, had parent/teacher conferences. I got tired of going to the school to discuss his lack of performance. He would get 100% on virtually every test he took, but he would never hand in homework or outside projects, do book reports where he would have to read a book. In fact, every book report he did in middle school I made sure I read the book too so I could help him with is report. I never did his homework, but I sure as heck helped him word several sentences so it didn't sound half assed.

My mother used to say to me that he seemed depressed. I just thought it was teen angst. I know hormones make kids do irrational things and think irrational thoughts. It is tough being a teenager if you all will remember. I chalked it up to that and continued to struggle with getting him up in the morning for school and getting him to do his school work. I didn't let him go and do, like many parents let their kids. I didn't "drop" him at the mall while I went to work. In fact, I rarely let him go to the mall. I hate going to the mall because of all the chaperone-less kids that run around and make noise and commotion. It's horribly annoying and I would be mortified if my son behaved in such a way. I let him go to the mall to movies (95% of the time I am with him), but I have let him go to the movies with his friends once in a while. I drop him off and pick him up as soon as it is over. I just don't trust some of these kids I see at the mall! The few times I let him hang out with some of his friends other boys have shown up and Jack got involved with them, unbeknownst to me, and was getting pot from them. That floored me.

My son had never done such a stupid thing. In fact, he's usually the only boy his friends' parents will let spend the night or come visit. He is polite and mannerly and generally fun to be around and parents like this. They feel safe letting their kids hang out with him. Unfortunately, again, I'm somewhat strict and he doesn't get to do much. Poor kid gets bored, and it turns out, he is clinically depressed so now he takes Lexapro. I wonder if I didn't help make him depressed by restricting his social life so much? Finding the pot plant he had hidden in his room pretty much made it even worse. He hasn't been to the mall in a long time and I don't let him go to any of his friend's houses anymore. I guess all trust is gone. It's a shame too. He's not even trying to build it back up, he just sits in his room, either sleeping, watching t.v. or playing video games. I don't want him to be a social hermit, but I just don't know who to trust and I'm afraid to trust him for now.

My sister let my 14 year old neice go to the mall a LOT. She is one of the kids that Mike referenced in his post, but my sister went with her a lot too. She did go with her friends a lot while my sister worked, but she stayed with my mother during the day while my sister worked so my mother let her go to the mall a lot with her friends, unsupervised. One night at the mall she and another girl shoplifted a $5 bracelet from a store. My neice didn't bet barred, but she got into trouble and got put on probation.

That girl has problems. My sister is a conscientious and good mother, but somehow, she lost control. Now my neice lives with her father in Illinois. We'll see if he can straighten her out. She's a disrespectful trainwreck!

This school year my son will start as a sophomore at brand new highschool since we moved to a new county. We live in a small town in a lightly populated county, only 20K people. It's very country in the North GA mountains so I'm hoping a little, small town will rub off on his urbanite brain. I hope he makes some great friends who are good kids with good heads on their shoulders with (hopefully!) conscientious parents. I'll be making a point of meeting every parent of every child he wants to spend time with. I can't let him fall back into drugs. His future depends on it.

I hope this post has let anyone who reads it see that good parents can have problems with their kids too. I have instilled good values, taught respect and tolerance, worked with him to set goals and try to meet them and he still was influenced by outsiders. Perhaps it's t.v., perhaps it's other peoples kids who haven't been given the structure that I have given my son. Just be aware that any child can change from a good one to a confused and trouble one that acts out to let us know they need help. They push their limits all the time and we have to reign them in. It's tough to do when you're a single parent, but I work my ass off trying to be a good parent to my son. I'm sure many other parents know just where I'm coming from.