So lately my husband and I have been talking about it. Since our son is a senior this year, and almost out of the house, we talk a lot about how He is going to do off on his own at college, and did we do a good job of preparing him for life as an adult. I think we did, except for maybe the fact that He needs to learn how to cook a little more than what goes in the microwave, and figure out that colors and whites can't be washed together in the washing machine.
So how did we do it? Well, it was the perfect combination of tough love and lots of love. We have always taught him about what the consequences are before something were to happen. We scared the hell out of him when He was young by having him watch tv shows that involved teenagers taking drugs and what happens to them, tough love for sure, but it worked. We have never hid anything from him, my husband and I rarely fight, but when we do we don't hide an argument from him because He learns from them, We don't sugar coat anything.
We have also let him make his own decisions. He's always been a soccer player, He started when He was 4 1/2, but because of some bad coaches and bad soccer politics He decided to quit when He was 12 and play football for 2 years in middle school. We didn't force him to stay with soccer, even though we wanted to really bad, we decided to let him make his own way and learn on his own. We continued to be positive with him in his new chosen sport, always telling him how proud we were of him. When 9th grade came along He decided to go back to soccer, saw how much He had lost by not playing for two years, but has worked his butt off to get back to where He wanted to be in the sport. To this day He says He wishes that He hadn't quit those 2 years, that He never quit thinking about soccer, but He needed to learn that lesson on his own, He would have fought us even harder if we forced him to stay with it.
Sports for sure can be a big life lesson, when dealing with coaches, parents and other kids with different mind sets, the more I mind set instead of TEAM mindset especially.
We have never told our son that He needs to score a goal for us, or He needs to do this or that on the field to make us proud. Instead we have always instilled the no I in TEAM philosophy. Help lead your team, be positive and have fun out there, and the most popular "We are so proud of you!" It seems like this philosophy has worked great, He is always saying "When I step out on that field, I am just thinking about having fun playing soccer with my friends." Even thou most of the time He is playing forward or midfield, He doesn't put pressure on himself to score a goal, and when He does score it's for his team, not for himself. This year his overall goal is for his team to win state, not for some individual award or kudos. He wants to see his team succeed and do what we all know they can do, together. And before every game I tell him "I love you, I'm so proud of you, and have tons of fun today." Recently we had one of the parents on our team tell us to tell our son congrats on a great goal and always awesome unselfish play. That they loved watching him score, partially because of his talent and partially because he is a team player. We were beaming! Hearing the kudos from other parents really makes you feel like you really did do a good job with your kid, and that He did a good job learning all the life lessons that He's been taught.
So in the end, I think we have had just the right amount of tough love, lots of love, protectiveness, willingness to let him make his on decisions, positivity, and learning lots of lessons taken from all different places and people. My husband always says that we had a good kid to work with, which is true, but I think all kids are good kids to begin with, we just need to do our job as parents to keep it that way :)
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