I am going back to the well for some inspiration on what to write for this one. As the title suggests, I am going to expand on my philosophy on raising children, which, as seen on said blog is “same as my parents: remember what your name is.” For those of you that don’t know my parents, this might not make a whole lot of sense, but hopefully it will by the end of these 500 or so words.
Before I can really get into the topic at hand, I need to provide a bit of background information. As I am sure many of you know, I was born and raised in the great state of Utah, which I still view as a wonderful place to raise a family, though the overcrowding in the schools and expenditure per student is still a bit high. Anyways, growing up in such a wonderful place presented many unexpected challenges, especially upon arrival in the true social scene that was high school. I have posted a few times about high school, so I’ll spare a lot of the details, but it truly is the crux of my children raising philosophy.
While in high school, I was in the minority amongst my friends in one regard: having a curfew. While nearly all of my other friends from school had curfews, even during the summer, which made it hard to find stuff to do beyond 9 or 10 at night. It was often me and classic friend Megan hanging out at her house until she fell asleep watching some movie. It’s not that we were going to get in a whole lot of trouble anyway; it was Utah after all and we weren’t “bad kids.”
Despite not having a curfew and generally doing pretty wholesome things, I still respected my parents enough to let them know when I was going out. It was all my mother really wanted to know. More often than not, however, as I was leaving the house, my mother would always say that she didn’t care when I came home or if I came home that night. All she said was “Remember what your name is.” As a younger teenager, this really didn’t mean a whole lot to me, but as I grew older, and even when I started thinking about having children of my own, its true meaning became clear to me.
My mother simply meant that I shouldn’t do anything that would disgrace my name, or my family’s name as an extension. I’m sure she didn’t want to see her children’s names in the police blotter or the local news embarrassing ourselves. It is a very simple philosophy, and one that I plan on using a bit in the future should I have children. Granted, society is a bit different now than it was then, an era where we never locked our front door or were afraid to be out late at night as teenagers. But hopefully my children will respect themselves enough not to embarrass themselves and make good choices when they go out and have fun. If not, they will definitely have a curfew!
Until next time…
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