What is your goal as a parent?

I’ve been thinking about writing this blog for a while. I consider myself an experienced parent. I even think sometimes that I am a successful one. Of course, I had felt differently about my skills as a parent before, but the longer I was a mother the better I did the job. Today I am just enjoying and ripping the fruits of my success. Why do I think that I am a successful parent? My children are very young, they are not completely settled in their lives, they will have to go through many difficult changes, and they will have to acquire many life skills. They do not always agree with me. They do things their own way. They make their own decisions and live the consequences. What is my role?
When we are young parents we imagine our perfect kids. What is a perfect kid? Is it the kid who is always obeying what you tell them? Is it a kid who does all the chores? Makes the bed? Completes the homework? Is polite with adults? What happens with those obedient kids when they become adults?
One of the stories my husband used to tell me about his teenage years stuck in my head. I always tell this story to illustrate how little some parents know about their children if they are trying to bring up their perfect kids. He was in ninth grade. He had been smoking for a couple years by then and, when going out with his classmates, he used to drink some cheap wine. Here, I have to add that my husband died before he reached his 42nd year from alcoholic hepatitis and bleeding pancreas. He did quit smoking though a few years before that. So the story went that his mother regularly and publicly was saying to everybody she knew that Her Son would never smoke and Her Son would never drink. She did have a pretty good idea of how her perfect kid would be. He used to sit next to her, listening to her image of him and nod.
Now my children tell me that same thing is happening in almost every family they know: the kids live their lives without telling their parents anything.
First, I have to tell you I am not judging anybody, we all work, we all have to feed the kids, we have to cook, clean, wash, pick up and drop dead every day and day after day. Even on vacation we are not really resting we have to ran around watch them and check if they are safe all the time.
You may not agree with me, but I consider my first success as a parent happened when my daughters discussed with me if they should start smoking at 11. The peer pressure was unbelievable, all the kids in these suburbs, where we had just moved, had been smoking since second grade. I used my persuasion talent and we managed to resist the peer pressure and postpone that by almost a year. I knew when they finally did start to smoke. They asked me questions after they saw their first porn film. They told me when they had sex for the first time. They had very few secrets from me and whatever they didn’t tell me they always told to each other. I think I am very lucky parent. I could share my values with my kids because we discussed everything that happened to them and had no secrets.
It was not easy. My heart was dropping somewhere into my knees after every new secret they told me. I had to watch not to start screaming and breaking furniture. But I promised them to be their safe heaven and I made sure that I helped them with every problem they brought to me. I still really value their trust.
One important rule I followed always: it was not me who went on to solve the problem, we discussed different possibilities, I would tell them what I would do in their place, and then they were on their own to face their conflict and their life lessons. That was the time when I realized for the first time that the goal of a parent is to help the kids grow up into happy independent adults. To become happy, a person has to learn how to be true to him or herself. To be independent, a person has to acquire many life skills that help him or her to solve conflict situations. If it was me running around and solving their problems they would learn only one thing – to sit at home and wait for the mommy to take care of their business.
Imagine a situation: my daughter didn’t do her homework, but she does not want to get a bad mark. That happened many times when she was in the elementary school. She is asking me what to do. I tell her that she has to come to the teacher before the lesson starts and tell him that the homework was not done because of this and this reason and she promises to complete the work. To do that was not easy for a 6-7-year-old, but she did that, and did that again, and again. It became so easy to her, that later in college it was her second nature to negotiate her work with her professors almost in all classes. Now she is saying she does not remember the first time, it just seems natural to keep them informed about her situation.
This is just one example, but that’s what I call an independent person and that is why I am a proud parent.