Last week I interviewed Kim who is watching her daughter navigate the college search process. I wanted to learn more about how she was managing to remain so hands-off. Today, we look further back at the journey she took as a parent to get to this point. The good news is that Kim seems to think it takes less work, not more! She uses the word lazy to describe her parenting style, but as we all know, no working mom of two teenagers is lazy! Maybe she just has her priorities straight. If you’re older kids aren’t doing their own laundry yet, read on…
Elephant Mamas: What values or traits are you most proud of instilling in your kids?
Kim: I am proud that they are independent, hard-working (most of the time!), and have a sense of humor. Sometimes I wish they were a little more empathetic, but I suppose that comes with age, disappointment and rejection, and experiences interacting with different types of people.
Elephant Mamas: What’s the most fun you’ve had with your kids recently?
Kim: The most fun we have as a family is when we travel. We’ve had a variety of travel experiences both in and outside of the United States. Most of the funny experiences happen when something doesn’t go quite as planned (like when my husband thought he’d rented a car in Spain but forgot the part about needing an international driver’s license), which gives our children more material with which to make fun of us.
Elephant Mamas: I know you can’t just assume this level of independence for your kid when you get to this age. How did you get to this point?
Kim: Well, the short answer is that I am a really lazy parent! My kids like to joke that I was the mom who ignored her children at the playground with my nose in a book. They are mostly right. You know those kids who make their parents hold them while they go across the monkey bars because they are too short to reach the bars? Not my thing. I used to tell them that if they wanted to do the monkey bars, then they ought to find a way to get up there because I wasn’t going to break my back holding them up there for half an hour! So they both learned to shimmy up the side and get to them themselves.
All kidding aside, I think the independence comes little by little. When my daughter was in 4th grade she was getting kind of sick of her after school program. Because she did choir twice a week outside of school, she decided to get a ride home with a neighbor and be home alone for an hour before her carpool pickup. Because I was in the middle of class at that time, she couldn’t call me, so she would email me at work to say that she was home. She liked that small amount of independence and the break from the crazy after school environment and I felt comfortable with her being alone for that amount of time.
In 6th grade she needed to get to her track meets after school. At the time, I worked farther from home and could not be there to take her to her meets. She had to take the city bus which involved a transfer. We showed her the bus route and on the day of the first meet, I got a, “made it!” text from her upon her arrival. I know she was nervous about it at first, but knowing she could actually do it was, I think, far more important for her to learn about herself than any overt thing I could have said to her.
When I had a different work schedule than I do now, I would always make the kids’ dentist appointments on their random days off when I was working. We would call in with the credit card and the kids would take the bus to their appointments. They loved to tell me that the receptionist would always ask, “Who are you here with?” and they would reply, “ourselves”. This started in middle school for them. But, the result of that is that now my daughter is so busy with all of her own activities that she makes her own appointments when it works for her schedule. There is no need for me to be a middle man when I have no idea what her schedule looks like.
We are lucky to live in an urban environment that lends itself to small steps toward independence. The corner store is 2 blocks away and we started sending them to get grocery items there in the later elementary school years. Being a lazy mom who can send her kids to the store has its upsides.
A final move toward independence is the financial kind. Both kids have had jobs since they were 12. My daughter started to babysit at that age and now, at 17, is a lifeguard/swim instructor, and my son is a soccer referee. She has her own debit card and realized early on that the after school Starbuck’s run was rapidly depleting her account. Uber is also tied to her card, not mine. If she doesn’t want to take public transportation, that’s her choice, but she has to pay for it. She learned another expensive lesson about online shopping – be sure to check the return policy.
And the grand finale lazy mom move is that both kids do their own laundry.
Thanks for the awesome insight Kim. You are definitely not lazy, but we’ll let you call it that if you want!
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