While I was growing up, adults had a favorite saying about their children giving them gray hairs. I haven’t felt the need for this saying much myself, especially after having heard it so often during my childhood. I guess I felt like it was just an insult to my children. I didn’t want my children to feel like I resented being their mom in any way, shape, or form.
My children have been a blessing. I haven’t felt the anguish as often as other mothers. My children have basically been good kids who were fairly easy to raise. However, I do believe if either of them were to make me utter the “gray hair” statement, it would probably be my daughter more often than my son. I said they have been a blessing, not perfect, just close to it.
My daughter has more freedom and privacy than many other teen girls. I put more trust in her and expect her to live up to that trust. So, it was with dismay that I discovered she had taken part in a quiz online that indeed made me wonder if any gray hairs had sprouted instantly. It was a quiz that was on an art site and was discovered by a mom in our homeschool group. Her daughter, being even younger than my own, had taken the same quiz. After some investigating, we discovered several of the girls in the group had participated in said quiz.
Having said this, it was not so much the quiz itself, but some of the answers my child gave that shocked me. Needless to say, we had an intense family discussion after I read through the quiz. She claims she answered the quiz as a character in a story. I made the point that it still gives her a very bad image, and that not everyone is going to see it as just being a character in a story but as part of her own values. It was disappointing and upsetting to say the least. I dare not go into the details of this quiz. I try to follow the rule that if I want my children to respect me, I must practice respecting them. I only feel the need to vent somewhat and hopefully help other moms realize that even their good children need to be monitored from time to time, for their own sakes. They are the clay, and we are helping God shape them. I guess the gray hairs are just a free bonus???
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