Mommy Meany????????
So, the last 2 or so weeks have been devoted to the celebration of my 50th birthday -- culminating in a big party that my sister and my mom threw last Saturday......A party for which friends and family from all over the country showed up here in Rochester.
Includng, of course, my 2 sons.
Now, my 2 sons, ages 21 and 23, have always been very social and excellent conversationalists...and some of the people who were in town last weekend have not seen them in 10 - 15 years. So, of course, there was a lot of talk about how well they've turned out and what great young men they are. (Yeah, I'm a very proud mom here!)
At one point, E (the eldest) was talking about all of the cooking he's been doing in the house that he's living in over the summer (with 1 other Georgetown graduate and 4 Georgetown soon-to-be-seniors), and about how good/important he feels it is for all the "kids" living there to eat together, and talk, and just have that "~family time."
One of the older men, who was there and with whom I used to teach, said something about how unusual it is, in his experience, to find young, independent, straight, single men who understand and value that -- let alone know how to "create" it and are willing to go out of their way to do so. And my son was kinda taken aback -- like he realized that it was true but had never really thought about it like that -- and said: "Well, you know, my mom always said that it was her job to raise us up to be the kind of people who can value and respect themselves and others and who others are gonna want to be around!"
Wow!!!!!!!...and then, of course, I was an incredibly, amazingly, extra-very proud mom!....because it's true: I did used to say that -- usually when one or both of them was screaming at me about what a terrible, unfair, meany of a mom I was for making them do something they needed to do or for not allowing them to do something inappropriate. They actually had this little "mommy meany" song that they'd made up and that they would chant when they were particularly p*ssed at me..... and, at some point after they'd "sang" it through several times, I would say simply: "You're right: I am mean...and I'm gonna be mean as long as you try to do things you know you shouldn't be doing (or try to get away without doing things you should be doing.) And the reason I'm mean is because it's my job to raise you up to be the kind of people who can value and respect themselves and others and who others are going to want to be around. So, you can go right ahead and call me whatever you want, as long as you're doin' what I told you to do!"
Well, I've been thinking about this a lot -- not only because I am really just so amazingly happy and grateful that my sons seem to be turning out "right," but because other people recognize and respect that and, most importantly, because they recognize and respect it themselves.
And also because, it seems to me to be like a perfect metaphor for /example of why it's so important to avoid codependent, coddling, enabling behavior. Not that it's any adultss job to "raise up" another adult, but it's defintely each of our job to teach others how to treat us.......and it's defintely to everyone's advatage when we take that job very, very seriously and do it very, very well.
freya