By Jon Acuff
MY oldest daughter is 20. My youngest daughter is almost 18. I feel like I have to share my parenting credentials right away because I often see influencers on Instagram who have a one-year-old giving parenting advice. You’re not parenting when your kid is one, you’re protecting. Your main goal at that age is to keep them fed, alive and clothed in outfits they haven’t thrown up on that much. (It’s a sliding scale.) Jenny and I are less than a year away from empty nest, so the three ideas I share today have been through the ringer. I’m not a parenting expert though. I’ve made a boatload of mistakes that will inevitably allow a counselor to buy an actual boat when my kids unpack them in their 20s. My friend Al, who is a therapist, told his kids he’d give them a list of the things he did wrong so that they can save time with their eventual counselor. That said, there are three things Jenny and I did that helped us a lot. They involve vegetables, cell phones and puddles. As you head back to school with your kids, I hope they help you too.
Idea #1: Declare Vegetable Amnesty
As I mentioned, the first few years of parenting are mostly focused on protecting your kids from themselves. You’re basically trying to prevent an eye patch. Mingled into the eye patch years though is the difficulty of getting your kids to eat. Maybe you have perfect angel kids who are easy eaters, but for the rest of us heathens, meal time can be a bit of a struggle. It’s got amazing potential for a battle. One of my kids used to chew food she hated relentlessly as a form of silent protest. She wouldn’t swallow it ever, she’d just sit there staring at us defiantly chewing, like a cow with cud, until eventually the item lost all its color, flavor and consistency. She did this so often with pork that we started calling it “meat wad,” because she would just wad it into the side of her mouth like a relief pitcher from the 1970s enjoying a plug of skoal chewing tobacco. But, there’s one thing that Jenny and I did that 10 years later is still serving us well. We declared, “Vegetable Amnesty.” We let our kids pick one vegetable they didn’t ever have to eat. For as long as they lived, they could avoid this vegetable. But, they couldn’t add a second or third vegetable. It was only one. And, this is the kicker, if they wanted to change vegetables one night, they had to eat 10 of their original choice. It was like getting beat out of a gang if you wanted to quit, there were consequences. My oldest daughter L.E. chose mushrooms. (It’s the texture she hates the most.) I don’t think she’s ever willingly eaten a mushroom. Sometimes, they are part of meals and after a few bites she sniffs them out with disgust. That girl has a bloodhound’s nose for mushrooms. She doesn’t like tomatoes either but if she ever throws a fuss about them, I just get a jar of mushrooms from the pantry. I’ll say, “If you want to avoid the tomatoes, you know what you have to do. 10 mushrooms.” She starts dying laughing and says, “Never!” It’s become a huge joke in our house that still makes us laugh to this day. Is that silly? It is. But if you’re going to try to make it through parenting without being silly, you’re crazy. Feeding your kids isn’t easy. Try a bit of Vegetable Amnesty.
Idea 2: Don’t be afraid of the phone.
I had a lot of self-righteous ideas about when my oldest daughter would get a phone. Because of my job, I even got to write about them and give speeches about them in front of audiences. When I put my foot in my mouth, I don’t like to do it in a small way. I go all in! I honestly thought that we probably wouldn’t get her one until she was in the 9th grade. That seemed like the best age. I had a lot of reasons for this decision and felt fairly confident about the whole thing in general. To be honest with you, I was self-righteous and ignorant, a dangerous combination. Unfortunately, when it comes to cell phones, I was wrong. Very, very wrong. My oldest daughter got a phone on her 12th birthday. That is much, much earlier than I anticipated. Why did she get one there? One conversation changed my entire opinion. L.E., my oldest daughter, is in an awesome small group with our church. Over the years, she has really grown to love that group of girls. They have become some of her best friends. One night, my wife said, “It’s too bad L.E. doesn’t get all those encouraging texts from her small group all week.” I didn’t know what she meant and asked her to clarify. “Well, all week, every other girl in the group is connected to a group text. They send Bible verses and jokes and encouragement. Since L.E. doesn’t have a phone and she’s the only one without one, she misses that community.” My main problem was that I was judging my daughter’s adolescence based on mine. I thought, “Her friends can just call our house phone!” What a stupid, stupid thought. Kids don’t use the phone that way. They don’t call each other. I’ve maybe seen my daughter have 5 phone calls in her life. It’s text or nothing. Suddenly, the phone wasn’t a demonic distraction that would whisk my innocent daughter into a digital wasteland where teens get in trouble, it was a connection point. Does that mean every kid should get a phone at 12? Nope. I don’t think every kid is the same. I think some are ready at 12 and some aren’t. (It’s the same with driving. Some kids are ready. Some are definitely not.) Each kid matures differently. But, I implore you to think long and hard about the issue. As a dad, I’ve been thrilled at the connection it’s become for us. L.E. sends me jokes and memes she sees. She texts me out of the blue. In addition to all the updates on where she is, I get to know her personality in some really fun ways. If you’re a parent, the phone conversation is headed your way. The age of 12 worked for us, maybe 14 will be better for you. (And social media is a separate conversation.) Time will tell, but please know that it’s not nearly as bad as you think. Your kid’s first phone can be a wonderful experience if you’re deliberate about it. Fear no phone.
Idea 3: Take the pressure off of puddles.
I can still remember one of my more embarrassing moments as a parent. I won’t say “most” because there are definitely worse moments, but this one is in the top 10. We were at Bert’s, a big pumpkin farm in North Georgia. We had just finished a great fall day, taking a hayride and picking out a big pumpkin for our house. On the way out, my oldest daughter, who was only three at the time, saw a big puddle in the parking lot. She immediately started jumping in it and laughing. I grabbed her hand and pulled her out of it and said, “Oh no, don’t do that!” I overreacted and made it seem like she had jumped into a lava pit. She was shocked at how intense I was about something so small. An old man next to me, in an incredibly kind way, said, “Son, it’s just a puddle.” In that moment, I felt three inches tall. He was right. It wasn’t a big deal. My daughter was so happy with that puddle. She was thrilled and what harm did it do? We were leaving anyway. It didn’t matter that her socks got wet. She certainly didn’t care. It was not the horrible situation my words and reaction made it out to be. It was such a minor thing. And with the perspective of time, that old man could see it in a way I couldn’t. It’s just a puddle. As a parent, you will face many puddles in your life, especially as school starts back. Some puddles will be literal, resulting in wet feet. Some will be bigger, forgotten homework, broken curfew and a thousand other variations. You have a choice to make. You can overreact. You can scream and fuss. You can stress out. You can make the whole thing bigger than it really is. Or, you can see it for what it is, a puddle. More things in our life are puddles than we want to admit. What seems life changing right now, might be a puddle in a few years. Ask a parent who has a kid in college if the mistake they made at 10 was as big as they thought. Chances are, it wasn’t. Chances are, they might even smile at the memory of the whole thing. Try This! Learn to laugh at the puddles. Learn to forgive the puddles. Learn to move on. It’s just a puddle. Jon
P.S. I wrote a book with my daughters that helps kids develop strong, resilient mindsets. Pick up a copy, right here: amzn.to/3LfmA46
