My Three Daughters

Some of you may recall the TV series, My Three Sons. Just replace Sons with Daughters and that gives you a look at my life. I have 3 daughters, 2 daughters from my first wife and a stepdaughter who came into my life when she was 15.  They are all grown now (42, 39 and 38) with their own families and children of their own. Raising children is always a challenge and I have the gray hair to prove it.  The great thing about being a grandparent is that you can laugh when they complain about their kids doing to them what they did to me (payback is hell). I will save the discussion of the joys and challenges of grandparenting for another blog.

There are several phrases that most parents dread hearing from their children. Here are some examples:

• "How much do you love me?” – When you hear this phrase, your first instinct is to grab your wallet. How much emphasis they put on love gives you an indication of how much it with cost you.

• “Do you have time to talk?” – When you hear this phase, your next instinct is to grab your heart. You are about to hear something you don’t want to hear, and it probably isn’t going to be good news.

• “Promise not to tell Mom (or Dad)” – You are in a no-win situation and really know that you are going to hear something that is going to put you in a difficult spot between their mother {or dad) and them.

• “What are you doing right now?” -  Be prepared to change all the plans you had for that day.
  

As children get older, you gradually start losing control of what you can keep them from doing. At some point, other than locking them up in a room 24 hours a day, it is almost impossible to keep them from doing what they want to do. At this point, you can only impose consequences for their actions or make sure they understand the potential consequences that they may suffer for their actions. The key at this point is to keep the lines of communication open. However, if you impose consequences, make sure you are willing to enforce them even if it will affect your life. Not enforcing consequences will only empower them to continue to do what you don’t want them to do.

As my daughters got to their teenage years, the lines of communication also became more challenging. The standing rule with my daughters is that they can tell me anything, and I will listen to what they say until they finish. After they finish, I have the right to give my opinion, and while they have the right to make their own decisions, it is my job to make sure they understand the potential consequences of whatever they decide to do.  This has worked well for me, and my daughters confide in me to this day, (sometimes more than I want to know).

To talk about all the conversations that I have had with my daughters and the advice given would take more time than I can or want to cover in this blog, but I will give a few examples:

• Why do men do hurtful things? My comment was “All men are assholes, just some are bigger than others”. There is a corollary for women, but I will let you figure that out.

• I don’t understand why something didn’t go as planned? My comment was “Life is what happens while making plans to do something else.”

• Why can’t I find the right person to have a relationship with? My comment was “if you don’t like the fish you are catching, you’re fishing in the wrong pond”.

• I don’t know what I want or like. My comment was “After each failure if life, you may not know what you want, but your list of what you don’t want gets longer.” Use these red flags to prevent you from wasting time with someone or something you already know you won’t accept.

• Why can’t I get __________ to do what I want? My advice was “People can’t be changed unless they want to, but they can be trained with the proper motivation.  You just need to figure out what motivates them.”

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As I always tell people, I am not a qualified therapist, just a father who has gained experience the hard way. If you have comments or advice for me or others, please feel free to share.

Chuck Greer