Posted on 04/28/2008 9:58:55 AM PDT by qam1
There was a day - in a different world, granted - where becoming a grandmother for the first time meant a trip to the shops for some knitting needles and pretty pastel wool. How traditions change. Tracey Smith did come over all creative as soon as she qualified to use the title 'Granny' - but she sought out a very different type of needle-craft to mark the momentous event. Pulling down her skinny jeans, she bared all for her local tattooist, who etched her new granddaughter's name, Aliya, right across her hip, where it now vies for attention against some serious belly-button bling. Welcome to the world of the thirty-something granny, a place that is more about Heat magazine than hymn sheets, and where the only baking that gets done is with a rather garish fake tan product called Fake Bake. Tracey is 36 and a grandmother twice over. On Monday, she features in a rather jaw-dropping documentary called Britain's Youngest Grannies, which peeks into the lives of those who are embarking on grand-parent-hood at an age when many of us are still wondering whether we are mature enough to own a cat. She isn't actually the youngest granny who has agreed to let the cameras follow her 'glamorous' - according to the publicity material - life. Pauline Huntingdon, from Peterlee, Co Durham, was 34 when her daughter, Leanne, then 15, fell pregnant and made her a granny to Casie. At first, she tried to convince Leanne to terminate the pregnancy, but when Leanne refused she reckoned she had two options: she could buy a rocking chair and let retirement beckon; or she could hitch her skirt up just a little more, and hit the clubs - night, rather than golf - defiant. "Now I get called a GILF," she says, with less embarrassment than you would expect from a woman in her position. What's a GILF? "It means Granny I'd Like To F***", her daughter gleefully explains, offering the sort of information you probably don't get in Saga Magazine. "Some of the lads in the clubs call me that when they find out what age I am," says Pauline. "I suppose it's a compliment when it happens - some young lad giving you the eye can be quite nice, but it's a bit difficult, especially when I'm out with my daughter. "It's Leanne's fault they know I'm a granny. It's not something I shout about. But she's always telling everyone that I've got a granddaughter. The lads can't believe it." It's hardly surprising, really. Pauline is still only 38, and a pretty young looking 38-year-old at that. Once or twice a month she and Leanne, now 20, go clubbing together. They are never short of male attention, and invariably it is assumed that they are sisters - until Leanne puts them right. Now, though, by letting the BBC cameras follow her, Pauline is shouting about her grandmother status, and is anxious to distance herself from the scones/twin-set/tea-with-vicar image. Perhaps she goes a little far. She invites the cameras into her bedroom as she gets ready for a Saturday night on the town, volunteering fashion tips that she almost certainly didn't get from her own granny. "If I have my legs out I cover my boobs up, but if I have my boobs out I cover my legs up. Or that's the idea," she giggles. Still, even she seems demure next to the granny who goes under the most un-grannylike name of Tara and is filmed 'on the pull' in her native Norfolk, teetering along the streets in an impossibly short skirt with bunny ears on her head. It is a successful night for Tara Bailee, if success can be measured in young men snogged. Her conquest is celebrating his 21st birthday, and doesn't seem in the slightest bit perturbed to discover that she is not only a mother of four, but a grandmother of one. "I thought she was about 26," he says, which boosts her ego in a way that no number of blue-rinses could ever do. So what possessed these women to offer themselves up as examples of a new trend of modern matriarchs? And, sniggers aside, is being a grandmother in your 30s really something to celebrate - in bunny-ears or not - or to find deeply, disturbingly, shameful? Leanne Huntington always looked younger than her years, which made the sight of the pregnancy bump on her 15-year-old body all the more shocking for strangers. Mostly, they said nothing, but sometimes the tiny tuts turned into nasty comments. "She got very upset in a shop once, but didn't tell me why until later," says Leanne's mum Pauline. "Someone had looked at me, then looked her up and down and had a go, saying something like, "kids having kids, disgraceful". "I wish she'd told me at the time. I'd have had a go. I'd have said: 'Who are you to judge? What do you know about us?'" Depressingly, though, the story of the Huntington family is all too predictable, at least on the surface. Pauline fell pregnant at 17, more of a scandal in those days, but still not something that was considered rare or unusual. She accepted her lot, convinced herself that her happy-ever-after would still happen, just be hurried along by early motherhood. Disappointment followed. She did marry Leanne's father, albeit after they had become parents, but the marriage did not last. A second relationship, which produced two more children, also failed. Now she, like her daughter is a lone parent. Pauline says: "Leanne's dad and I had been together all through school, what people call 'childhood sweethearts' which sounds romantic, but rarely is," she says, perceptively. At a time when other girls were thinking of university and holidays, Pauline was pinning endless washing on lines, and scrimping to make ends meet. She took on a string of low-paid jobs in shops and factories, and wondered what might have been. She told herself she would not allow her daughter to make the same mistakes she had, but when Leanne, then 15, said that she had something to tell her, she knew exactly what that 'something' was. "I knew. I just knew. I said: 'Oh God, no!' I told her she couldn't have it. She said she would have the baby. I didn't understand. "Why would she want to give up everything, when I'd been so determined she shouldn't have to make the sacrifices I'd had to? "I wanted her to live the life I never could. I thought she'd be cleverer than I'd been." The story is repeated in every family story featured in this extraordinary - or perhaps all-too-depressingly-ordinary - documentary. There is nothing unusual about the children of teenage mums becoming teenage mums, we are reminded. Those born to under-age mothers are three times more likely to become teenage parents themselves - even if those mothers spend their whole adult lives swearing they will not let history repeat itself. Trisha Brolley, from Essex, became a mum at 15, but by the time she reached her late 20s she had become involved in mentoring young women, warning them of the perils of under-age pregnancy. She was horrified when her own daughter came home, at 16, and announced that yes, she too was pregnant. She is now grandmother to an 18-month-old girl, Keira. "I don't even look like a nan," she says. "I blamed myself. There I was, having gone through all the struggles, heartache and frightening times. "I didn't want that for her - but I didn't do my job properly. I was educating other teenagers about sex, but I let her down." Ditto Tara Bailee, 36, mum to Rickeita, 16, and grandmother to baby Lexie, eight months. (Where do they get these names!) And Tracey, of the tattoos. Neither "planned" to get pregnant so young, and spent much of their early adult life wondering what had gone wrong. Tracey missed out on so much of normal growing up stuff she went off the rails at a rather delayed stage - when her daughters were in their early teens - and started partying so hard they had to live with their father. Curiously, her girls - Lalah, 17 and Kay, 19 - seem to have had no desire to send their own lives in a different direction. Before they had left their teens they had both given birth to their own daughters, Aliya, seven months, and Tiyla, three months, and both of these pregnancies seem to have been planned. "They knew I got pregnant young," explains Tracey. "They must have thought I'd cope really well and it wouldn't hurt if they got pregnant. "I'm happy for them - I certainly don't think they've ruined their lives because they can have careers when the children are grown up. "My girls are different from other teenage mums. They've both got partners who work as shop assistants and live in housing association homes. "It's the ones on benefits who have six or seven kids and don't look after them that are the problem. "And there are a lot younger grannies than me. One of the girls told me there was a 24-year-old on the net with a grandchild. Others are 28, 30. I actually think I'm fairly old to be a grandmother." What's perhaps surprising in this documentary is that, behind all the flippant stuff of how great it is to be able to wear glittery eyeshadow when you are a granny, is some real honesty about what being a teen mum does to you. And none of it is remotely positive. Pauline says it turned her life into one big cul-de-sac, from which there is still no escape. She looks forlornly out the window and wonders what might have been, had she waited a few years for motherhood. "I would have done different things. I would have learned to drive. It sounds trivial, but money was so tight so there was never enough for lessons. And I've never been abroad. I'd love to have gone for weekends away with the girls, or even nights out. "I gave everything up for my kids. You just accepted it in those days, but now I think: 'What if?'" She was never desperately ambitious, not even for her daughter. "The things I wanted for Leanne weren't big. A good job. For her to go on holiday, to see a bit of the world, to spend £100 on a haircut once or twice in her life." Still, she feels she failed her, and perhaps she did. There is something infuriating about her vagueness when you ask how much she knew of her daughter's sexual activity. In one breath she says she knew Leanne was on the Pill at 15 - therefore 'safe'; in the next she says she was playing ostrich, with her head in the sand. "You don't like to think of your little girl being sexually active, so you block it out. I know it's stupid, in this day and age, but I did bury my head. "Now I think: 'God, how could I have been so stupid. Why didn't I just have that conversation?'" Tara's approach was even more breathtaking. She says she put Rickeita on the Pill herself as soon as she started her periods - "at 12 or 13". Why on earth would any mother do that? "It wasn't a case of giving her permission to sleep around but you can't lock a young girl in her bedroom 24/7," is the (feeble) explanation. None of the mothers seem to blame their daughters for falling pregnant, which is odd. One can hardly say sex education is lacking in schools these days. Without exception, they have been incredibly supportive about the pregnancies, and gone out of their way to help with childcare, even sharing parenting duties. Indeed, they have made it much easier, perhaps, than it might have been. Maybe that is part of the problem, rather than the solution. "I look at Leanne and think she has it much easier than I did," admits Pauline. "She goes out, maybe not every weekend, but there are people who can babysit. I do my share. At the beginning I probably did more than I should have. "She was a typical teenager living at home. You know - they expect the washing just gets done, as if by magic. "I'd come home from a day's work and find she hadn't made up the bottles, or done the washing, so I'd take care of it. There were a lot of rows. "It's so hard being the mum of a teenage mum. You want to help, but not interfere. Things were better when Leanne moved out. "We are much closer now, and she's had to assume much more responsibility." The mothers and daughters may boast of sister/sister type relationships, but the generation divide is patently clear. At one point, Tara is filmed slogging at one of the, again, low-paid cleaning jobs she has taken to make ends meet. She laughs that her daughter would never do such menial tasks. "Rickeita would never do this. I think she would rather die before she did this." It's a telling statement. For what has changed in one generation isn't so much attitudes to teen mums as expectations by teen mums. The older women accepted life would be a struggle from the moment they got pregnant. Their daughters, however, live in a world of benefits, council housing and continued educational opportunities. Leanne is studying psychology, and insists that she can still make something of her life. "OK she has had to accept benefits, but that is a short-term thing until she can get herself established. "She wants to better herself, and I think she will. She has more ambition than I ever had," says Pauline. Maybe it's understandable that, watching their daughters take their first (premature) steps in motherhood, the thirty-somethings here feel a certain nostalgia, both for the life they had and the one they lost. Tara fizzes with excitement when she takes her granddaughter to a mother-and-toddler group, but looks forward with equal relish to her monthly night out clubbing. She admits her new-found love of partying comes from one simple fact: she was so busy being a mum in her teens and 20s that she "forgot" to be a young woman. "I'm having more fun as a grandmother than I ever did in my teens," she says. Tracey, too, seems to be enjoying her grandchildren more than she did her own children. ("it's so nice to be able to give them back."). In the next few weeks, she'll be back in the tattoo parlour, having little Tiyla's name etched on that midriff. One hopes that her taut abdomen will withstand the rigours to come. Tracey's daughters are still only 17 and 19 - with plenty of child-bearing years ahead.
A good reminder that social pathology has nothing to do with color.
Paragraphs are your friends. That giant mass of text is unreadable for most.
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There was a day - in a different world, granted - where becoming a grandmother for the first time meant a trip to the shops for some knitting needles and pretty pastel wool. How traditions change.
Tracey Smith did come over all creative as soon as she qualified to use the title 'Granny' - but she sought out a very different type of needle-craft to mark the momentous event. Pulling down her skinny jeans, she bared all for her local tattooist, who etched her new granddaughter's name, Aliya, right across her hip, where it now vies for attention against some serious belly-button bling. Welcome to the world of the thirty-something granny, a place that is more about Heat magazine than hymn sheets, and where the only baking that gets done is with a rather garish fake tan product called Fake Bake.
Tracey is 36 and a grandmother twice over. On Monday, she features in a rather jaw-dropping documentary called Britain's Youngest Grannies, which peeks into the lives of those who are embarking on grand-parent-hood at an age when many of us are still wondering whether we are mature enough to own a cat.
She isn't actually the youngest granny who has agreed to let the cameras follow her 'glamorous' - according to the publicity material - life. Pauline Huntingdon, from Peterlee, Co Durham, was 34 when her daughter, Leanne, then 15, fell pregnant and made her a granny to Casie. At first, she tried to convince Leanne to terminate the pregnancy, but when Leanne refused she reckoned she had two options: she could buy a rocking chair and let retirement beckon; or she could hitch her skirt up just a little more, and hit the clubs - night, rather than golf - defiant.
"Now I get called a GILF," she says, with less embarrassment than you would expect from a woman in her position. What's a GILF? "It means Granny I'd Like To F***", her daughter gleefully explains, offering the sort of information you probably don't get in Saga Magazine. "Some of the lads in the clubs call me that when they find out what age I am," says Pauline. "I suppose it's a compliment when it happens - some young lad giving you the eye can be quite nice, but it's a bit difficult, especially when I'm out with my daughter. "It's Leanne's fault they know I'm a granny. It's not something I shout about. But she's always telling everyone that I've got a granddaughter. The lads can't believe it." It's hardly surprising, really. Pauline is still only 38, and a pretty young looking 38-year-old at that.
Once or twice a month she and Leanne, now 20, go clubbing together. They are never short of male attention, and invariably it is assumed that they are sisters - until Leanne puts them right.
Now, though, by letting the BBC cameras follow her, Pauline is shouting about her grandmother status, and is anxious to distance herself from the scones/twin-set/tea-with-vicar image. Perhaps she goes a little far. She invites the cameras into her bedroom as she gets ready for a Saturday night on the town, volunteering fashion tips that she almost certainly didn't get from her own granny. "If I have my legs out I cover my boobs up, but if I have my boobs out I cover my legs up. Or that's the idea," she giggles. Still, even she seems demure next to the granny who goes under the most un-grannylike name of Tara and is filmed 'on the pull' in her native Norfolk, teetering along the streets in an impossibly short skirt with bunny ears on her head.
It is a successful night for Tara Bailee, if success can be measured in young men snogged. Her conquest is celebrating his 21st birthday, and doesn't seem in the slightest bit perturbed to discover that she is not only a mother of four, but a grandmother of one. "I thought she was about 26," he says, which boosts her ego in a way that no number of blue-rinses could ever do.
So what possessed these women to offer themselves up as examples of a new trend of modern matriarchs? And, sniggers aside, is being a grandmother in your 30s really something to celebrate - in bunny-ears or not - or to find deeply, disturbingly, shameful?
Leanne Huntington always looked younger than her years, which made the sight of the pregnancy bump on her 15-year-old body all the more shocking for strangers. Mostly, they said nothing, but sometimes the tiny tuts turned into nasty comments. "She got very upset in a shop once, but didn't tell me why until later," says Leanne's mum Pauline. "Someone had looked at me, then looked her up and down and had a go, saying something like, "kids having kids, disgraceful". "I wish she'd told me at the time. I'd have had a go. I'd have said: 'Who are you to judge? What do you know about us?'"
Depressingly, though, the story of the Huntington family is all too predictable, at least on the surface. Pauline fell pregnant at 17, more of a scandal in those days, but still not something that was considered rare or unusual. She accepted her lot, convinced herself that her happy-ever-after would still happen, just be hurried along by early motherhood. Disappointment followed. She did marry Leanne's father, albeit after they had become parents, but the marriage did not last. A second relationship, which produced two more children, also failed. Now she, like her daughter is a lone parent.
Pauline says: "Leanne's dad and I had been together all through school, what people call 'childhood sweethearts' which sounds romantic, but rarely is," she says, perceptively. At a time when other girls were thinking of university and holidays, Pauline was pinning endless washing on lines, and scrimping to make ends meet. She took on a string of low-paid jobs in shops and factories, and wondered what might have been.
She told herself she would not allow her daughter to make the same mistakes she had, but when Leanne, then 15, said that she had something to tell her, she knew exactly what that 'something' was. "I knew. I just knew. I said: 'Oh God, no!' I told her she couldn't have it. She said she would have the baby. I didn't understand. "Why would she want to give up everything, when I'd been so determined she shouldn't have to make the sacrifices I'd had to?
"I wanted her to live the life I never could. I thought she'd be cleverer than I'd been."
The story is repeated in every family story featured in this extraordinary - or perhaps all-too-depressingly-ordinary - documentary. There is nothing unusual about the children of teenage mums becoming teenage mums, we are reminded. Those born to under-age mothers are three times more likely to become teenage parents themselves - even if those mothers spend their whole adult lives swearing they will not let history repeat itself.
Trisha Brolley, from Essex, became a mum at 15, but by the time she reached her late 20s she had become involved in mentoring young women, warning them of the perils of under-age pregnancy. She was horrified when her own daughter came home, at 16, and announced that yes, she too was pregnant. She is now grandmother to an 18-month-old girl, Keira. "I don't even look like a nan," she says. "I blamed myself. There I was, having gone through all the struggles, heartache and frightening times. "I didn't want that for her - but I didn't do my job properly. I was educating other teenagers about sex, but I let her down." Ditto Tara Bailee, 36, mum to Rickeita, 16, and grandmother to baby Lexie, eight months. (Where do they get these names!) And Tracey, of the tattoos. Neither "planned" to get pregnant so young, and spent much of their early adult life wondering what had gone wrong.
Tracey missed out on so much of normal growing up stuff she went off the rails at a rather delayed stage - when her daughters were in their early teens - and started partying so hard they had to live with their father. Curiously, her girls - Lalah, 17 and Kay, 19 - seem to have had no desire to send their own lives in a different direction. Before they had left their teens they had both given birth to their own daughters, Aliya, seven months, and Tiyla, three months, and both of these pregnancies seem to have been planned. "They knew I got pregnant young," explains Tracey. "They must have thought I'd cope really well and it wouldn't hurt if they got pregnant. "I'm happy for them - I certainly don't think they've ruined their lives because they can have careers when the children are grown up.
"My girls are different from other teenage mums. They've both got partners who work as shop assistants and live in housing association homes. "It's the ones on benefits who have six or seven kids and don't look after them that are the problem.
"And there are a lot younger grannies than me. One of the girls told me there was a 24-year-old on the net with a grandchild. Others are 28, 30. I actually think I'm fairly old to be a grandmother."
What's perhaps surprising in this documentary is that, behind all the flippant stuff of how great it is to be able to wear glittery eyeshadow when you are a granny, is some real honesty about what being a teen mum does to you. And none of it is remotely positive. Pauline says it turned her life into one big cul-de-sac, from which there is still no escape. She looks forlornly out the window and wonders what might have been, had she waited a few years for motherhood. "I would have done different things. I would have learned to drive. It sounds trivial, but money was so tight so there was never enough for lessons. And I've never been abroad. I'd love to have gone for weekends away with the girls, or even nights out.
"I gave everything up for my kids. You just accepted it in those days, but now I think: 'What if?'" She was never desperately ambitious, not even for her daughter. "The things I wanted for Leanne weren't big. A good job. For her to go on holiday, to see a bit of the world, to spend £100 on a haircut once or twice in her life." Still, she feels she failed her, and perhaps she did. There is something infuriating about her vagueness when you ask how much she knew of her daughter's sexual activity. In one breath she says she knew Leanne was on the Pill at 15 - therefore 'safe'; in the next she says she was playing ostrich, with her head in the sand.
"You don't like to think of your little girl being sexually active, so you block it out. I know it's stupid, in this day and age, but I did bury my head. "Now I think: 'God, how could I have been so stupid. Why didn't I just have that conversation?'" Tara's approach was even more breathtaking. She says she put Rickeita on the Pill herself as soon as she started her periods - "at 12 or 13". Why on earth would any mother do that?
"It wasn't a case of giving her permission to sleep around but you can't lock a young girl in her bedroom 24/7," is the (feeble) explanation. None of the mothers seem to blame their daughters for falling pregnant, which is odd. One can hardly say sex education is lacking in schools these days. Without exception, they have been incredibly supportive about the pregnancies, and gone out of their way to help with childcare, even sharing parenting duties. Indeed, they have made it much easier, perhaps, than it might have been. Maybe that is part of the problem, rather than the solution.
"I look at Leanne and think she has it much easier than I did," admits Pauline.
"She goes out, maybe not every weekend, but there are people who can babysit. I do my share. At the beginning I probably did more than I should have. "She was a typical teenager living at home. You know - they expect the washing just gets done, as if by magic. "I'd come home from a day's work and find she hadn't made up the bottles, or done the washing, so I'd take care of it. There were a lot of rows. "It's so hard being the mum of a teenage mum. You want to help, but not interfere. Things were better when Leanne moved out. "We are much closer now, and she's had to assume much more responsibility."
The mothers and daughters may boast of sister/sister type relationships, but the generation divide is patently clear. At one point, Tara is filmed slogging at one of the, again, low-paid cleaning jobs she has taken to make ends meet. She laughs that her daughter would never do such menial tasks. "Rickeita would never do this. I think she would rather die before she did this."
It's a telling statement. For what has changed in one generation isn't so much attitudes to teen mums as expectations by teen mums. The older women accepted life would be a struggle from the moment they got pregnant. Their daughters, however, live in a world of benefits, council housing and continued educational opportunities. Leanne is studying psychology, and insists that she can still make something of her life. "OK she has had to accept benefits, but that is a short-term thing until she can get herself established.
"She wants to better herself, and I think she will. She has more ambition than I ever had," says Pauline.
Maybe it's understandable that, watching their daughters take their first (premature) steps in motherhood, the thirty-somethings here feel a certain nostalgia, both for the life they had and the one they lost. Tara fizzes with excitement when she takes her granddaughter to a mother-and-toddler group, but looks forward with equal relish to her monthly night out clubbing. She admits her new-found love of partying comes from one simple fact: she was so busy being a mum in her teens and 20s that she "forgot" to be a young woman.
"I'm having more fun as a grandmother than I ever did in my teens," she says. Tracey, too, seems to be enjoying her grandchildren more than she did her own children. ("it's so nice to be able to give them back."). In the next few weeks, she'll be back in the tattoo parlour, having little Tiyla's name etched on that midriff. One hopes that her taut abdomen will withstand the rigours to come. Tracey's daughters are still only 17 and 19 - with plenty of child-bearing years ahead.
What I’m wondering is how far and wide did the Mail’s reporterette have to go to find a brace of camera-ready GILFs.
I’m betting that most such grannies are not so presentable nor are their stories.
I have an ex-wife who thought it would be funny to go out with my youngest just to see how many phone numbers my youngest could collect....(youngest is 6’2” and rather eye catching)
I can see going out, having a nice quiet meal and adult beverages with my children. I can’t see going clubbing with them.
And yeah, my ex and I are grandparents.
These people are suffering from deep spiritual sickness.
Ping list for the discussion of the politics and social (and sometimes nostalgic) aspects that directly effects Generation Reagan / Generation-X (Those born from 1965-1981) including all the spending previous generations are doing that Gen-X and Y will end up paying for.
Freep mail me to be added or dropped. See my home page for details and previous articles.
This is how the welfare state “improves” society. Pitiful.
On the lighter side, Kip Winger has updated his song She’s Only 17, to She’s Only 35.
I guessing that it's my fault, too.
Fade To Grey
I notice where one gal says you can’t lock daughters up 24/7.
Yeah, well, I rode heard on my two teenage daughters as a single parent. It isn’t easy, but, if you try, you can keep them on a really short leash.
Sounds like a couple of these mothers took the attitude of “since I can’t always be there, no reason to even try.”
I also gave my daughters the speech up front that the only 100% percent proven method of preventing pregnancy and STD’s is abstinence.
There was some comedian that had a good line. “I'm at that awkward age. I don't know if I should ask the Mom or the Daughter for their phone number”.
And the age difference isn't all that odd, especially historically. My grandparents were having kids at the age of 18 and 19. They didn't have much time for “clubbing” though.
I love the attitude that these mums take, "Well... what can I do? She goes out every other night..."
When parents opt to be friends (and club mates) rather than parents, this is what happens.
"It wasn't a case of giving her permission to sleep around but you can't lock a young girl in her bedroom 24/7," is the (feeble) explanation.
There was a girl in my jr high school (middle school) whose mom did that. The girl acted on the "protection" and became "everybody's" girl. She thought she was having a good time, but she was simply used and abused, passed around from boy to boy. It was a terrible, tragic thing.
Interesting article.
This is definitely NOT a trend. It’s just an anecdotal example of vapid ho-bags. They’ve existed in every generation and they mean nothing to us or to society. In fact, they only mean a good time to whatever guy at the moment is mounting them.
No offense to anyone out there, but this is an anecdotal article about the “freak of the moment” and it’s not a trend.
Tragically, the trend is toward less children.
Yours truly,
The Woim
:::sigh::: It’s amazing how shallow people can be.
In another article a man locked up his daughter for 24 years. He also had 4 babies with her . . .
But that was another story.
The fact is you can't lock them up and I find that strict parents create rebellious kids.
I raised my own kids extremely strict. They all rebelled.
My own brother gave his own kids much more freedom, but he raised them with maturity and expected high standards from them.
I would much rather spend time with his kids than my own.
Strict is bad. Look what it did for the former soviet union.
I was strict with mine when they were younger. My thought being that you teach them young and relax as they get older. Which is the way I handled it.
My oldest admitted a year ago or so that it must have been tough trying to keep up with three very energetic teenagers who also happened to be bright.
He was more right than I think he realizes.
Raising kids is tough. I have regrets, however, I did the best I could. And I darn sure tried not to repeat things that I thought my dad was wrong about.
I’m sure you did the best you could, also. At least you tried, something I’m not sure the mothers in this article can claim.
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