At one time or another, all of our kids have said that to me or my husband. Our children definitely love their siblings, but I know they also keep a mental (or maybe even an actual physical) scorecard of the privileges each one has received.
We probably have to take responsibility for some of the score keeping. Our children would decide they wanted something, either a possession or permission to do something, and we would decide if it was appropriate (usually we considered if it was age appropriate). E, being the firstborn, normally was the one who paved the way for her siblings. Consequently, the decisions we made with her carried through to the rest of the kids. If we agreed that E could have pierced ears at 13, contacts at 14, a cell phone when she began to drive, or date after she turned 16, then that held true for everyone else.
But there were exceptions. K went on a date a little before her 16th birthday. M had a cell phone well in advance of getting her license, and, unbeknown to us, she was "dating" for almost two years before she was 16.
Probably the biggest hullabaloo erupted when we gave M her own key to the Civic. Both E and K were incredulous. Why had they never had a car key of their own? They totally understood that the car that was available for them to drive, a '97 Malibu, didn't come with extra keys. But they still felt that M was enjoying a special privilege that had been denied them.
I can only imagine how E will feel when she learns that we let M drive the Civic to Chicago today. Even though E would never have wanted to drive to the city, and in fact rarely wanted to drive anywhere, she knows that had she asked to take the Malibu downtown, our answer would have been an immediate "NO."
On the other hand, K would have jumped at the chance to drive in the city. Now that she is a city dweller with a car of her own, she reminds us on a regular basis that we never let her drive on the highway, the expressway or downtown. She feels that we sheltered her too much and should have trusted her more.
Yet seeing that M drove downtown in order to fix the entree for a dinner party K was hosting for some friends, I don't think she is going to make much of a stink over the fact that M was allowed to do something that she wasn't.
In our defense, M is 20 years old. If K had still been living at home, even just for the summer, when she was 20, we probably would have allowed her to take the car downtown for a specific event.
Being a parent isn't easy. The road we guide our children along, from infancy to adulthood, is filled with potholes, lane closures, and speed traps As we travel down the road, it's important to listen to our kids, to take their ability and individuality into account when making decisions about situations and activities.
But there are times when it doesn't hurt to employ a little bit of selective deafness, especially when they wail, "You let her do what?!?"
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