Graceful Parenting in Austin

This time, I was the one with homework. Noel, my 10-year-old, is great about her homework. She does it when she first gets home from school. Now I’m the one with homework from my parenting class.

I tell Noel that I need to tell her a story using a picture or memento. She say she MUST know all my stories already because I LOVE to tell stories. But I tell her this is homework, so I’d like us to try.

We pull open scrapbooks and leaf through them. She knows a lot of my traveling stories and the story of me getting married to her Dad when she was six. (Noel is my step-daughter.) But I find a funny picture and it might be too grown up, but I decide it is OK, so I show it to her and tell her the story.

My friend was throwing me a bachelorette party at her house and I was nervous because she told me my Mom couldn’t come. I wondered if that was a code of some kind for strippers and I said I’m not into strippers and she said I should trust her.

So the big night arrives and we eat and drink and tell stories (I LOVE stories!) and then we gather in the living room and my friend says there is entertainment and she turns on the stereo and I’m already embarrassed.

Then the male dancers come out and start their routine, but something is different, I recognize these guys. No, not from the clubs on 6th street, but from church. These guys were my girlfriend’s husbands!

They danced a funny dance and ended up in their boxers and I was crying and laughing the whole time. Then, near the end of the routine, Blue Eyes came out, dressed in a handsome suit, with a single red rose for me. It felt so right. How great it was to be single and free and date different men (well, not usually my girlfriend’s husbands) and have them dance for you (well, that never happened exactly, until now), but Blue Eyes was the man for me and I was ready to settle down.

I show her the picture of the three guys in their boxers and her Dad in his suit with the rose. I tell her how much I knew her Dad was the right man for me and how much I appreciated my crazy friends.

She said that was a pretty good story, but she wanted to know something else.

With no warning, no reason to think this might be coming, she said “Carol, have you ever done drugs?”

Weellllllll, I guess the RIGHT answer to this is “No, never,and don’t you ever think that is an OK thing to do!” but that wouldn’t be the exact truth. I have a history, a little one, nothing memior-worthy and it is probably still safe to run for office. The most difficult part of my history related to bad decisions I made when it came to alcohol. The legal drug, when I was of legal age, was the most dangerous for me.

So I told her the truth. And I told her that for me, drugs and alcohol aren’t so bad by themselves, it is the decisions people make when under the influence. Your brain works differently and definitely not better and there can be pretty extreme consequences.

She said OK, that made sense. It made sense to me too, to give her a little information at a time about drugs, laying a ground work for making good decisions later. To avoid the authoritarian approach of “no drugs or else!” because I wouldn’t always be there to take care of the “or else” part of that deal. I imagine each day now as a preparation for when she goes off to college and I want her to have the information and the strength to make good decisions then.

Well, Carol, that is a funny story, but not much of a review about the parenting class. Well, I know but I am out of time so stay tuned for part 2.