Posted by Minnie-Haha on May 15, 2005, at 15:09:33
In reply to What ages are our kids?, posted by Dinah on May 14, 2005, at 14:26:26
> Who's nearly been all the way through it?
> Who's just at the beginning?My grown son, from my first marriage, is 26. He's in the Army National Guard and will be sent to Iraq in 2-4 months. (Gulp.) My other son is only 11. I was almost to the finish line with Steve: He was 15 when Joe was born.
> Kids are all so different, and parenting styles are too. What is your kid(s) like as a son/daughter? What sort of parent do you like to think you are? (friend, authority figure, etc.) What sort are you really?These are good questions. I was only 20 when I had S. and our relationship was much different. There were things about it I liked, and things about it I'd change if I could go back. I liked that I was young and full of energy and enthusiasm and creativity. He was only 4 when his dad and I divorced, and I was a single mom for 9 years before I remarried. I was poor, so we got by on a little, but we did so much! Walks to the park, the library, hiking, camping. But I was still immature when he was a kid and I wish I could change that. I grew up in a dysfunctional family. There wasn't a lot of kindness and sympathy. There was A LOT of teasing and impatience. So I used to tease and be impatient with S. a lot -- because I didn't know better! (The teasing was mostly in good fun, but I didn't understand then that little kids don't get teasing.) Looking back now, I also think he had an unidentified LD, but I didn't know to ask the school for an evaluation. I just thought he was lazy. (That's what my parents would have thought.) He really had more of big sister in me than a mom. At least in the early years. But we are very close nonetheless, and we talk a lot.
I was 35 when I had son #2. Older and definitely wiser. I have a good relationship with his dad, and J's got the benefit of a good man in the house. (My first husband was such a flake.) But the second pregnancy was much harder on me than the first. (Both ended with C-sections.) I miss that I don't have such an active relationship with J. We do go to the park and hike and camp, but maybe one-tenth as often. And when he started having behavior problems in school, I knew to have him evaluated. We found out he's highly gifted with a speech-language impairment in the social use of language. (Almost like Asperger's Syndrome.) So now he gets the support and therapy he needs.
> I have one son, aged nine. He's a sensitive spaniel of a boy. Definitely not a terrier. He feels things really deeply, but rarely expresses them. Our challenge with him is to let him be a kid. We're delighted when he's naughty.Yes! J. never gives us any crap. His disordered behaviors are *internal*. I worry that when he does really start testing us -- if he ever does -- he's going to be a 6-foot teenager.
> ... He's got a pretty strong sense of right and wrong...Yes again. Both of my sons are this way, though S. needed more discipline than J.
> Where I probably could use a bit of work as a parent is being more parental. The thing I brought from my parents to my own parenting is probably not being clear enough on the separation of generations, and being a bit too much like a buddy. I think that's an easy trap to fall into with an only child...
Because there are so many years between my sons, it's almost like I raised two only children. There are definitely up sides and down sides to having only children.
poster:Minnie-Haha
thread:497720
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/child/20050226/msgs/498106.html