Do As I Say, Not As I Did

Those of you who led blameless lives before and after becoming parents should skip this post and go about your regular business of making the rest of us feel inadequate and/or hypocritical. Thanks. See you later.


Are they gone?


Okay, good. For the rest of us, one of the pitfalls of telling the kids about the birds and the bees is the fact that, sooner or later, the kids will want to know what we did when faced with the choices that will confront them. Sooner or later, the oldest child will learn enough calendar math to figure out that he couldn't possibly have been conceived on your wedding night unless he was the world's first 9-lb preemie. One of these days, your kids will find the photo album from your first wedding or get an earful from drunk cousin So-and-So about what a ladies' man old Dad was back in the day. Me, I've got to get the high school and college diaries out of reach of my kids before they take it in their heads to start rooting around in boxes in closets.


I guess this applies whether the topic is sex or drugs or honesty - we want to equip our kids so they make better (safer, more moral, less embarrassing) choices than we did. If we lie to them about our experiences, we lose credibility when they inevitably find out. If we launch unbid into an account of that one time at band camp, we run the risk of glamorizing our bad choices. What's a parent to do?


First of all, it's important to spend some time thinking about your own choices and experiences (positive and negative) and how you might explain them in light of the values you want to pass to your child. I say "might" because the point of this exercise is not so much what you're planning to tell the kids about what you did as it recognizing how your attitude about your experiences will communicate itself.

Second, remember that the earlier you begin communicating your expectations and beliefs to your child, the more natural it will seem to your child to talk in terms of expectations and beliefs later, like when your 12-year-old wants to know why she can't have boys at her slumber party. The older the kids get, the more appropriate it becomes to discuss how your own experiences formed your expectations and standards. (Of course, there's no reason to be overly specific in describing your experiences to your kids, either. "I waited until I was engaged" is a perfectly valid statement without adding the fact that you were engaged three times before you got married.)