(This essay was first published in my local newspaper, way back in 2003.)
Summer is approaching fast, high school graduation time, and another wave of fresh faces is about to slam into the beach. I call it the Great Rude Awakening.
Maybe they’re off to college, where they’ll find that their professors will flunk them without so much as a warning note sent home to Mom and Dad. Or maybe they’re starting a full-time job that will require them to stay sober and get some sleep on Friday nights. Or maybe they’re about to move into their own expensive apartments, with rent due on the first of the month and expensive refrigerators that constantly burn expensive electricity, whether or not they contain food from the expensive supermarket.
For the second year in a row, my wife and I have a daughter among the capped and gowned, and for the second year in a row, we’re worried that our girls are taking their first steps into adulthood with a distorted idea of what it means to be a grown-up.
After so many years of homework, exams, report cards, and living by the bell, the average high school student peers over the fence of graduation and imagines a land of total freedom. No more pencils, no more books, no more chores. Driver’s licenses. Legal entry into bars. Paying jobs. It’s the end of a long and undeserved prison term.
Adults seem to be in control of their lives, free to do whatever they want. And they are. They’re free to make their own choices. They decide what they’re going to do, and how and when they’re going to do it. But there’s a catch: they also have to bear the consequences of those choices. And that’s the invisible wire that trips up so many of us as we hop the fence and scramble across the open field. Our total freedom is riddled with restrictions.
I can choose to not pay the telephone bill. But after a couple of months of that freedom, I no longer have a dial tone. I’m free to spend our grocery money on lottery tickets, but if I linger too long in that financial fantasyland, my family has nothing to eat. I can choose to stay out all night, but when I come home in the morning the lawn still needs to be cut, and the car still needs to be inspected, and the cats still need to be fed. And my wife is probably very upset. No small price to pay.
Sometimes it isn’t even clear that we’re making choices. When you don’t show up for work, you’ve surrendered the option of keeping that job, and given the decision back to your boss, who may or may not put up with your lack of consideration. The trouble seems to start when we focus too heavily on what we want, and forget about the price.
Every time we make a choice, we eliminate the other choices. When we order pancakes for breakfast, we have to let go of our desire for French toast. When we decide to go to India on vacation, we also decide not to go to Ireland or Italy or Indonesia. When we choose to get married, we’re choosing to be with this one person, and not all the others. This seems as though it should be self-evident, but parents of teenagers know it is not. Such decision-making involves sacrifice. It is the giving-up part, I think, that teens have trouble with. But that’s what a choice is — this and not that, here and not there, Monday and not Tuesday.
I guess if I could sit down with our two daughters and all the other new graduates and actually get them to listen, I’d try to help them understand this one idea: adulthood is not defined by drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes, having sex, or disappearing for days at a time. You’re an adult when you take responsibility for your choices and your actions. If you still look around for help every time you have a problem or feel inconvenienced or can’t get what you want, you’re not there yet. Try to make choices you’re willing to live with. And then deal with the consequences of those choices, even when you make mistakes. Learn to endure, even when things seem unbearable. Stand on your own two grown-up feet.
You can’t avoid the Great Rude Awakening, but you have the ability to soften the landing. If you’re lucky, nobody else will do it for you.
Mostly Bright Ideas 
Marie M
May 27, 2010
I”m sending a link to this to my four children (ages 20 to 15), and to my sisters and friends for their forwarding if they so desire. Thanks for your clarity and succinctness, sans scolding.
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Charles Gulotta
May 28, 2010
I think for the most part, parents are all struggling on their own with this impossible job. Wouldn’t it be at least a little easier if we could all help each other? A support group would be great, if we only had the time. I guess these online connections are the next best thing.
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Amiable Amiable
May 27, 2010
My god, I sense you’re not a helicopter parent! I commend and thank you! Though I’m not sure if it’s legal.
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Charles Gulotta
May 28, 2010
Most of that essay was wishful thinking. My wife and I are still the safety net for all three kids. Our two daughters, now in their mid-twenties, still call us up to ask what time Wal-Mart closes, or how long to bake a potato. I refuse to answer these questions with anything other than, “I don’t know.” I think our job is to raise the children to be self-sufficient adults who can figure things out for themselves. My wife likes to be the net. I have another essay I wrote a few years ago about why our kids need bad parents. Maybe I’ll post it one of these days.
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Marie M
May 27, 2010
I definitely have my share of subjects to nag about, and I’m “generous” in that department, but I’m also a firm believer in the wisdom of consequences. I do a lot of warning and only a little rescuing. So far, while the kiddos aren’t perfect, they are pretty darn good people–my husband and I are proud of them even as we are reminded on a regular basis that we all–all six of us–have some more growing up to do, one way or another.
Perhaps you will visit me if I end up behind bars. Wonder if they’d let me comment on blogs??
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Charles Gulotta
May 28, 2010
“…we all–all six of us–have some more growing up to do, one way or another.” Another lesson we’ve had to learn on our own. It never occurred to me that my parents weren’t fully grown up, and that they were hacking their way through the wilderness, just as we are now. Whenever some parent does end up behind bars, most people are shocked. I’m shocked it doesn’t happen more often.
I wonder if your kids know how lucky they are.
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Amiable Amiable
May 28, 2010
Marie and Charles, you’ve both got very lucky kids, you “bad parents,” you! I want to join your club, and propose that we design tees with prison stripes. A good friend of mine would make a good member. She fretted that she’d been too hard on her children, making them earn their allowance by doing chores. The horror! Then her oldest daughter came home from her first year of college and said, “Mom, thanks for being tough on me. None of the other kids at school know how to do anything for themselves!”
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Charles Gulotta
May 28, 2010
Thanks, AA. I know your boys are lucky, too. The comment by your friend’s daughter rang a bell in my brain. I think our daughters are actually much more capable than they let on, but for some reason they have a need to avoid cutting the string completely. (Bring me the big scissors!)
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thislawandthatlaw
May 28, 2010
A number of great observations. It is important to note that the choices not made are often as important as the choices made. Though I have created no offspring, I have great admiration for parents who take the time and effort to teach their young how to survive in the world, emphasizing that everything has consequences.
Sounds like you have excelled at the process.
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Charles Gulotta
May 28, 2010
I’d like to think I’ve excelled as a parent. I’d also like to think I excel at financial matters and speaking Japanese, but that wouldn’t be true either. Raising kids is like playing racquetball: you have to have one eye on where the action is right now and the other on where it’s going. The problem is, you almost never know where it’s going. Even when you have things figured out, there’s still that difficult step of relaying your knowledge to the child and having them accept it. And then, of course, they ultimately decide what they’re going to do. As a parent, you just hope they’ve listened to at least some of what you’ve tried to teach them, and that it was worth listening to.
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Brown Sugar Britches
July 8, 2011
this post is so great. life is about CHOICES. similar to pruning a tree. i think i stated on another of your posts that i once heard “pruning: it’s not WHAT you prune, it’s what you DON’T”. growing up is simply pruning your life. cutting off those things that deplete you and leave you wanting but nurturing and caring for those things that will EVENTUALLY make you whole, loveable and happy. it’s hard to teach concepts that don’t have instant gratification. it’s hard to teach something that you yourself are still learning.
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bronxboy55
July 12, 2011
I agree completely, Tanisha. And with a lot of this stuff, we never stop learning.
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