I don’t write very much about my family. I don’t write about parenting. I don’t spend time fighting the Mommy Wars. But today, I’m mad, and so here’s my rant about raising kids, making choices, and Sarah Palin.
First: raising kids. We like to believe that we know what we’re doing and that what we’re doing matters, but I’m not sure. We’re at the mercy of genes, environment, and personality. Some kids will view the threat of a time-out as a deterrent; others see it as a challenge. Some kids want to please authority, others don’t. And even kids who are doing fine make mistakes with huge consequences because they are kids and they are human beings.
A year or so back, my kid’s water polo team won a few games because their opponent had to forfeit. Several of its players were expelled for something drug related. I don’t know all the details and don’t care. I had a minute or two of glee, but then I realized that next year it could just as well be my kid’s team and maybe even my kid.
One of my errands this week is to take a bottle of hydrocodone to the police department. It was prescribed after my kid’s wisdom teeth were pulled, but it made him sick. No one in the house wants it. My husband had taken it when he had shingles and finished that scrip but didn’t particularly like it. It was prescribed to me after my son was born, and I loved it to pieces, but the doctor wouldn’t let me take it home. So, although I might in some circumstances be tempted to make use of the stash, I have no physical or psychic pain that would cause me to take my kid’s leftover hydrocodone.
Best to get it out of the house.
It’s easy to imagine scenarios where one of us might have taken it all and then moved on to buying it on the street: different genetics, different physiology, different physical or emotional circumstances. My kid didn’t finish the drug because it made him sick, not because I’m a great parent. I know people whose families have been hurt by painkillers and heroin, and it’s as much a different set of perfectly normal circumstances as anything else.
It really is the luck of the draw!
And what is success, anyway? And is there a deadline for achieving it? I know a ton of people who didn’t have their acts together in high school, who drifted around and made some mistakes and got involved with things that maybe they should not have. And many of these people, a few years later, got back on track. They did rehab and got help, found jobs with upward potential, went to college part-time, and generally did what they were ready to do become contributing members of society. They were failures at 16 and successes at 30.
Now, a lot of what happens in life is luck. It is chance. Circumstance comes out of nowhere and can’t be controlled. But – that doesn’t make us hopeless. We have choices in how we respond to the things that happen. We can choose to get out of bed, choose to get out of the house and see people, choose to make appointments or research support services, choose to learn new things. It’s not always easy; this is not to make light of the real tragedies too many people have had. I’m only pointing out that life keeps changing. We can learn from mistakes. We can get help. We can honor people who have died while still living our lives.
We can blame others. Sometimes others deserve the blame. We still have a choice about what to do next. What will that be?
And all of this brings us to Sarah Palin. It’s like a joke: “Thanks, Obama. My son has an alcohol problem and PTSD and beat up his girlfriend.” One of the reasons that I do not like Sarah Palin as a politician is that she pushed her children into the spotlight. John McCain, on the other hand, has a bunch of children from two different marriages, and grandchildren, and I’m not sure who they are or what they do. They are not relevant. They are private citizens free to live their own lives. And McCain doesn’t claim to have special political “papa grizzly” skills simply because he reproduced. That’s as it should be.
If you put your children on your resume, then people will judge how you performed as a parent. They will do this even though they may know that it’s not right. Kids often do what they do despite their parents, sometimes to spite their parents. That’s how the world works.
Track Palin is an adult. No matter what has happened to him in life, he is still an adult, and he can still make choices about how to deal with his situation. For his mother to blame the president is beyond stupid.
And with that, /rant. Thank you for reading.
