Raising Kids Like Pancake Making; You Experiment with the 1st One

Published May 2, 1985. When Susan and I married, we were young and idealistic. A few weeks after the wedding we sat down with notebooks and identified 17 goals we wanted to attain during our marriage.

Now some 20 years and seven children later, we are a little older experienced and wiser. Not long ago we sat down to discuss once again our major goals in marriage. After brief deliberation, we discovered we have only one major goal--that all the children leave home before we die.

But last Sunday was a transition of sorts for Susan and me. Doug, our oldest son, turned 18, moving us into the launching years of family life. And since reaching that point we have a few tender moments of reflection.

Susan said she was afraid that Doug wouldn’t need her any more as a mother. I assured her he would. I had similar thoughts that he would no longer have need of us as parents. But after discussing with Doug his future educational and career goals. I am sure we will be needed for some time.

We took Doug out to dinner for his birthday. We talked about what it has been like for him to be the oldest of seven children. His first response was that it has been tough. There has been little privacy along with our typical expectation that he be the parentified child. That is, in our absence he was expected to oversee the children. And like the oldest in most families, Doug has served in that function very well.

While celebrating his birthday in the restaurant, we told him that we now wanted to be his advisers in life, guides in helping him make the major decisions before him. He jokingly asked if that meant he now decides whether or not to make his bed and clean up his room. I told him we would discuss that later and quickly asked the waitress for more water.

Later that night Susan and I discussed our new transitional phase. I told her I had relatively few regrets about rearing Doug but realized that I had made some mistakes.

Both Doug and I are strong-willed individuals. We learned that early in life when I tried to force him to eat some green beans one Saturday when he was five years old. He refused and I insisted for nearly two hours. Finally, as a compromise, he ate two green beans. Then he threw up. Neither of us won. In fact, both of us lost something that day.

A similar experience happened just after he turned 15. He decided one Sunday that he didn’t want to go to church. I insisted, and once again he refused. I told him it was a father’s duty to see that his children went to church. I finally forced him to go and, in hindsight, it was a mistake. Once again, neither won and we both lost.

During the service the bishop gave a sermon on free agency and we concluded with a hymn that said. “Know this, that every soul is free, to choose his life and what he’ll be.” Somehow, Doug seemed to enjoy the meeting.

But I felt a little uneasy while trying to sing the second verse: “God will call, persuade, direct aright, and bless with wisdom, love and light. In nameless ways be good and kind, but never force the human mind.”

It was a tough lesson for me to learn, but Doug was kind enough to forgive an overzealous father who meant well. Rearing children is, indeed, like making pancakes. You learn and experiment with the first one.

We love and thank you, Doug, for helping us become parents. Somehow we have all survived.

Happy 18^th birthday