Saturday, July 25, 2009

Forty-two Ways in Forty-two Days- Diverse Parenting

Spending the last two weekends with two different sets of neices and nephews has been a lot of fun and very,very interesting. My sisters and I have been seperated by geography our entire adult lives. When we are fortunate- we get to see one another once a year. Our lives have taken extremely different paths and as such our children range in age from 7 to 22. In fact- my son is 9 years older than the next closest one to him.

What struck me most over the last few weekends is how completely differently we all parent. We all have the same goal in the end- to raise happy, successful and well adjusted children- but the paths that we take to get there are very, very different. I could go on for days and bore you to tears with our different choices and priorites for our kids- but I will spare you that. ;-)

I am thankful today that so far we are all moving toward that goal and the kids are all sweet, loving, smart young people. I am also grateful that despite how each of us parents- every adult in my family is more than willing to respect the parent's judgement and keeps the kids to their own parent's "rules" rather than disregard them and impose our own. It is out of love and respect for one another that we do that and it is what keeps us so close.

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