My 15 year old daughters reaction to "Laptop dad"

[renie408]

252. And that might also play into our 'luck' with our kids.

My husband and I have been together forever and have well defined roles in the raising of our children. We support each other and have generally projected a unified front for the kids. Also, as we are both self-employed and structured our lives around family, neither of my children have ever been in day care or so much as ridden the bus home. I have 16 frigging years of the car rider line under my belt. I think that this combination of things has led to a high level of consistency in my kids' upbringing.

I get that not everybody can manage what we were able to. Honestly, if we had our kids NOW, we wouldn't be able to, either. Luckily, for years my husband's small construction business combined with my small horse farm allowed me to pretty much be a SAHM. Or maybe SABM (Stay At Barn Mom). The kids came with me to the farm. If anybody ever asks my kids if they were raised in a barn, they are going to say, "Yes." Now neither business is really doing that great, but we are getting by. I am having to work a lot more and do off-property lessons, etc. But now the kids are old enough to tag along, or in the case of my daughter, she helps with the farm work. I imagine it sounds a lot more idyllic than it really is.

Again, LUCKY. I know we are lucky. But not all of it was luck. We have repeatedly made conscious choices which meant that we lived in a smaller house, took less vacations, didn't wear the latest, most trendy 'mall' clothes, but which allowed one of us to always be with the kids. We have been through hell and back as a married couple, but have stayed together and love each other more now than we did when we were 18. That was a choice we had to make, too. I swear, I am not holding us up as some kind of pillars of parenting. But I just don't believe it is random luck or the kids you happen to get or if they become exposed to outside influences, you are just screwed. If that's the case, why do any of us make ANY effort to be good parents? Fuck it. Whatever is going to happen is going to happen and I am telling you, there have been PLENTY of times I would have like to have punched one of the kids right in the face. But that would be BAD, so I talked instead. Sometimes I would have to tell them to go to their rooms and wait for the talk til I could get my shit together, but we really have managed to get through twenty years of parenting two active, smart, strong willed kids without shooting a laptop. And TRUST ME, they are strong willed. But they are also polite, friendly, well spoken, able to carry on a conversation with adults and both got high marks for behavior in school. My son would even manage to argue with the teachers in the very religious SC high school he attended without ever getting in trouble for it. I don't think he was their favorite student by a long shot, but every time it came up in conference, all they would say were things like "Nick certainly has a definite viewpoint, but he is very polite about sharing it."