Thoughts on Parenting

 I have been meeting with some ladies I went to high school with and planning for our reunion this Fall. Well, last night I walked into the room and stepped back in time. All the smart girls were already there and prepared with their lap tops, I Pads and Smart (ass) phones. I had to barrow a pen. Some things never change.
As we talked one of the ladies handed out a list of names and addresses of our classmates. She said the ones highlighted in orange were deceased, blue were in prison. We talked about high school while looking through old year books and I thought, well, at least I'm not in prison.
 I have fond memories of the time, but I pretty much hated everything about school. It's my fault, I know. I never put much effort in to anything and I made some bad choices. Every club I joined, elected me president for the following school year. And every school year, I dropped that club and moved on to something else. I never had the financial or parental support to compete at anything. My folks did the best they could, but in those days "parenting " was not yet a verb. Had it been, the definition would have read, to provide food, comfort, and shelter to ones offspring.
I'm as guilty as the rest of my generation, of parenting gone wild. It didn't start out that way. Sure, I stayed home with my little ones, taught them manners, read to them and tried to shelter them from the completely unparented  neighborhood kids. I fed them wholesome healthy organic food from my garden and limited sugary snacks. After testing and measuring all her students, a P E teacher at their elementary school, told me my children had dangerously low BMI numbers and needed to eat some fat. Soon afterward, I started back to work and we began a steady diet of Hamburger Helper. That pretty much took care of that little problem.
 But, my point is, this would never have happened to my parents. For one thing, my mom picked wholesome healthy organic food from her garden, rolled it in corn meal and fried it in her big black skillet. So I was getting plenty of fat. Also, had a P E teacher thought to speak to my parents about what they were feeding us, or any other problem she might have with our upbringing, after stepping over dogs, children and toys, she would have backed down with one look from my mother.