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Tuesday, May 08, 2012

The Pop-Culture Cat is Out of the Bag

My oldest five girls dressed like Little House on the Prairie and listened to classical music and folk songs on the radio.

My youngest three.... don't.

 Chuck Taylors and all black clothes for the boy, although he's fond of flame decorations, dragon imagery, and camouflage as well.

For the girls:  sparkly flip tops, nails in glaring shades of yellow, green, and blue, brand names,  and pop culture icons are now part of our vocabulary.

Whereas, once upon a time, I heard strains of Beethoven wafting from the kitchen when the dishes were being done, now I hear Gotye's You Didn't Have to Cut Me Off (and I know how to pronounce the band name); Taio Cruz' Break Your Heart; Perri's Jar of Hearts; and Bruno Mars' liltingly haunting and beautiful paean to being a self destructive  doormat lacking any self-respect whatsoever:


Fortunately, the boy doesn't like that one, although he did ask for a Fedora for Christmas.


What happened?  A number of things.  Here are the ones I can think of, and they are not necessarily in order of influence:

The older girls grew up attending churches where there were few to no other children or the other families were homeschooled and mostly dressed like we did.
The youngest three have been part of a congregation with from 50-100 University students (it changes year by year).

The older girls were the older girls.and when they were kids, their parents were the biggest influence in their lives. They grew up and into their own styles and tastes and new interests they'd picked up from 'outside.'  They brought them home. There really is no going back after that, because older siblings are far more interesting and cool than parents.

The grandparents never lived near us when the older girls were growing up. My parents moved next door when we moved here.  They are (and in the case of my dad, were) more modern than I am.;-D  The FYG in particular goes over to visit Grandma nearly every day and they watch television together.  I am not 100 % thrilled about all the shows they watch, but I am pleased with the grandmother/grand-daughter relationships, and while we do compromise, there are limits.

Separate bedrooms- until we lived in this house, there was always room sharing- sometimes four to a room.  Here's they've had their own rooms and they love it, and I do not.


The internet.

The older kids got driver's licenses and I developed a pathological aversion to driving.  This is more important than it seems, because in our family, the driver controls the car radio.

We got older, and so did the children.  When she was a young teen and I said no Harry Potter, the HG did not demur.  But when she was over 18, nannying five young children by herself while the mama was in the hospital and living in another state, she read it herself and came home and explained why she thought I was mistaken.  I agreed with her.

 When they were younger and we said no to the Lion King, Little Mermaid, Anastasia, and Aladdin, that was that.  When they grew up and became mothers of their own families, married to men who had their own likes, dislikes, standards, and convictions, they came back to us and discussed it all over again- not in a rude or argumentative way, but sometimes because they were amused, and sometimes because they just wanted to know, "So, why weren't we allowed to watch....?  Because it's my husband's favorite kid movie and I watched it with him and couldn't see anything objectionable enough to justify banning it completely from the house."
  The verdict was:
Still no to the Lion King for us, though not for another family, still no to The Little Mermaid (actually, the oldest girls felt more strongly about Little Mermaid than I did), an admission that probably the reason I nixed Anastasia is because I was pregnant and the whole stomach scene nearly made me vomit in the theater, and a reluctant compromise on Aladdin for the younger kids (I dislike the costuming).

Sunday School- the older kids quit doing Sunday school somewhere around 1993 or 4. We permitted the younger two to attend Sunday school from about 4th or 5th grade through 8th grade. They come back to the adult class for high school.

What didn't change:
Modesty is still required.  I prefer dresses for girls, but it's not a conviction.  Sleeves on shirts, length of shirts and dresses and no skin tight jeans- these are no compromise issue.  For the boy, of course, the length of his skirts is a non-issue;-D, but he may not dress so that his boxers show.

Certain standards regarding lyrics.  Musical style is, for me, a strong preference. Sexual lyrics are a conviction.  Bruno Mars' suicidal love song is okay, on the understanding that we will mock the lack of self-respect incessantly.  Other songs of his are right. out.


we still do not fund these things- for the more part.  Make-up and Nail polish are allowed, but I don't buy it, mainly because the budget for extras is tight.I discourage the make-up because I think it's really bad for their skin, not out of religious conviction.   Fedoras are fun, but I am not obligated to provide them, see tight budget.  I do buy sparkly flip flops when there is a need for sandals anyway.=)

Heels- you know the kind. Not allowed. No heels of any sort were permitted until the girls were 13, and then they still had to be low.  At 16 they can add another inch, but teetering, spikey things, shoes that alter the posture (and cause long term damage to heel cords, knees, back and toes)- nope.

boyfriend/girlfriend mushiness still not allowed, and there are no jokes about having a crush on this or that person.

No flirting.

Courtship.

Church and regular Bible study are so non-negotiable that they have never even come up.

I'm sure if the girls wrote this, they'd have a slightly different perspective about what changed and what didn't, and why, and what was good and what wasn't.

At this point, my only real regrets are:

Sunday School. they had great teachers with fabulous lessons and meaty discussions, but they still had a peer group in a setting that fosters and encourages peer dependency.

Pop music- kind of.  It's not that I mind it so much as I mind what it has crowded out.  We used to only listen to classical or folk music during school hours- even if the kids were just doing chores during school hours. I wish I had stuck to that rule firmly.  Pop music has informed and shaped the tastes of your youngest two far more than I like.

Separate bedrooms, which we created when we built this house six years ago.  They all vehemently disagree with me on this and they do love having their own rooms. But their very reasons and strength of feeling over having their own rooms only reinforce to me that this was a serious mistake.  With every single statement they make explaining why it is a good thing, they only offer additional evidence that it was a tactical error.  I am quite sure that they will see it my way as they grow older and have children of their own who are growing up.  Of course, at some point the boy would have had to have had his own room, regardless- except he'd have to share most weekends with the little boys, so there is that. But I wish we'd given him a closet and created a long dorm room for the girls.

Understand that none of these changes happened with fanfare, drama, tears, or even (very many) arguments.  Most of the convictions remained the same without drama, tears, and fights- although the FYG has been known to take a ruler to various pairs of shoes to 'prove' that this accepted pair has the same lift as a pair she is not permitted to borrow.  She didn't quite understand the 'changed posture' issue, and we did not back down, and she still loves us anyway.

I'd love to have to be able to wrap this up in a tidy closing paragraph that will leave you nodding your heads and oohing and ahing in admiration, but I can't. Raising children is not a tidy business that lends itself to tidy closing paragraphs, although I can fake it sometimes.

You will make some compromises and accept some things you once thought you wouldn't- at least, if relationships are more important to you than preferences.  And it is important to distinguish that difference between preferences and convictions.  It's also important to recognize when it is necessary or at least acceptable to impose your convictions on children and when it's necessary and important to back off and let them form and live with their own convictions.  Nobody else can figure these things out for you, either.  Older mothers can share specifics of our families, and we can share principles and personal details- but the details for your family will have to be worked out in, by, and with your family.

P.S.  I answered the two most common questions on this post here.

10 comments:

  1. Thank you, Oh thank you. As the Mom of teens . . . thank you. We have convictions, and standards. And non-negotiables, but some other things have gone in order to keep relationship.

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  2. I think this kind of post is fascinating. My experience raising my kids, age 13, 15 and 19 has been very different from yours and my conclusions about everything have been quite different, however, most people would toss you and I in the same box, if you know what I mean? Conservatives. Homeschoolers. :-)

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  3. I'm curious now about more of the whys. Why was the bedrooms a mistake? We are at the young stages, and I think I want them to share, but in this house we'd have enough rooms for no sharing (depending how many kids we wind up with I suppose). And why did your Harry Potter opinion change?

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  4. I cannot answer for DHM but we have had similar thought. If you are married will you share a room or have separate? Sharing as kids means learning to compromise on just about everything from room color to who is responsible for all the dirty socks in weird places. My kids who married spouses who shared rooms have had much easier times with sharing rooms. Not to say that there's been huge problems but just gravel vs country paved roads.

    My oldest is 28 and the youngest is 4 a lot has changed & adapted over a quarter century of parenting.

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  5. This post was oddly reassuring! Thanks! :)

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  6. Oh, my, I could have written this post, and I regret the pop music, too. Not bad stuff, just not the excellent. And I wish my second daughter didn't wear the high, spiky heels now that she's on her own, but she is beautiful and has much more sense of style and fashion than her mom ever had or wanted. And she loves the Lord.

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  7. I am an only child, and my husband was raised separately from his sister, so neither of us were ever in a position of having to share a bedroom (other than my husband's experience in the Navy) until we were married. I was also actively encouraged as a child to play by myself in my room.

    As a wife and mother, I wish my parents had not made those decisions (and my husband has a similar sadness). They made it very difficult for us to learn to share space with each other, and my habit of spending time alone has made for a steep learning curve as a SAHM. Since neither of us grew up with siblings around, we also don't know how to handle teaching our sons to share a bedroom (they're 3 and 1 right now, so they've recently started sharing a room).

    While I understand the decisions our parents made, I disagree with them. And I'm learning now, the hard way, that those decisions deprived us of important social tools for maintaining a healthy family environment.

    Thank you for this post.

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  8. Yes, very reassuring post! Things do change and when you unexpectedly add people or change churches, you have to deal with those choices. But I can rejoice in my kids' walks with the Lord and their convictions and help them continue to seek out the Lord to walk as society changes around them.

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  9. I found this "series" fascinating. Thank you so much for sharing so freely. My kiddos range from 16 down to 1, so it will be interesting to see my reflections/changes in about 20 years! :)

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Tell me what you think. I can take it.=)