My dad was a in a the Navy. A career enlisted service man and my mom was and still is a junior high school teacher. I grew up in a conservative, christian, patriotic, Leave it to Beaver kind of home.
Living in SoCal offers you a wide variety of activities to get into. Many of my friends from school or church did not do all of the things I did, and in California that is o.k. I played all the little league sports except for football because my dad did not trust Pop Warner and for good reason. I was into BMX biking and I grew up around the beach so I boogie boarded and learned to surf. I got into skate boarding and played high school sports and was active in the youth group, ditched school and drove to fast and had summer jobs and fished and went on mission trips and on and on and on. I had a great childhood in Southern California.
When I look back on my middle and high school age years in Escondido, I am surprised and all the different things I was involved in. It does not seem to be so common these days to do a little bit of everything. Kids today are more set in one or two groups of kids and that normally determines the activities they are involved. in.
Tonight at Grapevine Mills Mall we went over the watch the indoor skate part that they have. Today's skaters are not the most appealing crowd that I want Blake and Anna Jo to be aware of. The dress, talk and act odd, and I do not envision Blake as that kid in 8 to 10 years, but that was me from age 11 to 15. I was into skating and, and skate shops and decks and trucks and slim ball wheels and grinding and all that stuff. As I look back at it now, I wonder what the heck my parents were thinking when they let me bring that 1/4 pipe home and set it up in the backyard? Why did they let me hang out with those guys? Will I let or promote that activity to Blake and Anna?
The problems is that I judge the skater kid because he looks freaky to me, and the high school athlete I trust because I am around him more and feel comfortable with him, but the truth is that I do not want Blake and Anna doing half the things that the athletes do, and yet because of my job they will be drawn to that activity.
I was talking to a great friend in New York today and he asked what I was going to push Blake toward. "Are you going to make him play football?" I answered that Blake and Anna would both have to play golf, because that is a Bundy family activity that I did with my granddad and still do with my dad. Other than golf they can do what ever they want, but do I really mean that?
Having kids seemed like a great idea, but raising them is a lot more than I was planning on, and as the years go by the job becomes more and more consuming and causes me to worry. Will someone go and write a good, useful, short parenting book for me, please.
3 comments:
You're writing your own book--because nobody out there knows Blake & Anna Jo as thoroughly as you & Sharla do. You'll make both right & wrong choices as every parent does, but you'll learn from them both.
I'm signing up 3 boys for Pop Warner next week....not sure if that's one I'm gonna regret or not, but that's just how life goes....
You're a coach, which makes you a superb teacher, observer, mistake-corrector, and the best part, cheer-leader! As long as B & AJ know you're "cheering" them on, they listen to the teaching, advice, correcting etc.
Okay, ultimate cheese here.....you've got a great TEAM!
Love you little bro.
Sis
You've done it to me again Byron. So much I want to say!!
Humor, love, boundaries, grace, consistency, and listening are probably the key ingredients to letting kids know they are safe and loved. The two MOST IMPORTANT things we can communicate to our children. Whether their skaters, writers, athletes, artists, or anything else.
You and Sharla do that for them every single day.
PS: I had forgotten about slime balls. So amazing.
Now I know that I am not a parent so I don't have the appropriate outlook to give advice but I will say that Ross has a 1/4 pipe in his back yard and enjoys skateboarding/BMX biking and he doesn't look/act "strange". I know you may argue this since at one point he did have a lip ring but hey, he is still a good kid and I think my parents would agree.
I will say that it would be hard to MAKE Blake or Anna do anything for very long if they didn’t enjoy it (go talk to Chelsea about throwing the discus in high school…) so my only advice is to guide them in the right direction and let them choose for themselves. :)
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