Post Halloween Dilemma - Kids and candy UGH!

“Can I have some of my Halloween candy for dessert?” Samuel asked after we had finished dinner. I froze.  Before I could respond he and his younger sister, Ellen, had both gone to their bedrooms to fetch their candy.

“YOU STOLE MY CANDY!” my son screamed as he came racing out of his room.  I heard the angry voice and footsteps before I saw him.  He was about 7 years old at the time.  “Yeah YOU STOLE MINE TOO”, Ellen added.

"Oh Lord”, I said under my breath.   By this time both my son and daughter were standing right in front of me with a look of disgust and rage on their faces.   My daughter had her hand on her hip like she does when she is angry.  My son was holding the pillowcase, which was his bag of candy, in front of my face.  “This pillowcase was ¾ full last night and now it is only about ¼ full”, Samuel shouted.

“Oh my gosh Mom”, my daughter Ellen said.  “I remember that so well!”  We both started laughing hysterically.  My daughter, Ellen, and I were reminiscing about past Halloweens.   We both remember it well because it was repeated for a few years even though more than 20 years had passed since then.  It is funny now but it wasn’t back then.

Funny how your children can accuse you of doing things in ways that no one else can or maybe I should say they can strike a nerve like no one else can.  Perhaps it is the hypocrite factor that makes the difference.

“I don’t know what you are talking about and please do not speak to me like that”, I shouted back to Samuel and Ellen.  “Let me see the pillowcases”, I said.  (They had taken to using pillowcases to carry candy as it held more and was easier to carry around.)  I looked inside each of the two pillowcases.  “The candy just settled like cereal and other things do in boxes after they are in there for a while”, I said trying to be calm and dignified.   But I knew the guilt was written all over my face.  I was busted by my two kids.

“Mom you’re lying”, Samuel said with disgust.  He threw the pillowcase on the ground and stormed back to his room.  Ellen followed him.  Samuel never ate any more of his Halloween candy.

 As Ellen and I laughed I realized what a coward I was at that time. Even though it is a very funny story in retrospect, it aptly illustrates my lack of parenting skills at that time in my life.  You see my children, especially Samuel, would eat candy until he got sick.  I took the candy away so he wouldn’t eat so much of it and yes I ate a few pieces myself – maybe more than a few.   That part is OK but I lied to him about it rather than face a confrontation with Samuel.  Samuel was the king of temper tantrums.  They could last days.  I should have just been honest.  Trying to avoid the conflict only made matters worse.  It took me many years before I had the courage to be and learned to be honest with my children. 

Honesty, appropriate for the age, really is the best policy as I learned.   I would have to put up with a temper tantrum but then it would be over.  I didn’t have to be a hypocrite in the eyes of my children by preaching honesty and then acting dishonestly.  That course of action had far more lasting effects as they learned not to trust or respect me.  I have apologized for this and many, many other parenting deficiencies.  We can laugh about most of them now as Ellen and I did with our post Halloween trauma.  But, before we could do that, I had to “fess up” to my own mistakes and lies. That wasn’t an easy thing to do at least in the beginning. It was one of the most important things I did.  By admitting my own mistakes, it freed my children to admit their own faults and mistakes to me.   The honesty has helped us to form good and strong relationships.

QUERY:  Have you made mistakes or are there times when you have not acted in conformity with how you tell your children to act?   Is now the right time to “confess” that to your children?

Marriage and sometimes even a love story (Part Four)

 “I like you a lot,” one of the regular customers at the health food store where I worked in high school said to me one day.  I didn’t know quite what to say. Richard had graduated from an Ivy League school and was working in my hometown.  He seemed much too old at the time – 5 years older than I.   I really can’t recall how it was that we starting dating.  Over the next four years we spent a lot of time together.    We broke up after he moved away.    He came by my parents’ house several years later to hear from my Sister that I was married and having a baby.  I only appreciate now, almost 30 years later, what a great guy he was.  You see I wanted to fall in love like Jennifer Jones and William Holden did in “Love is a Many Splendored Thing.”     I wanted some adventure or something different from my middle class upbringing. As to the latter, I got my wish!

I wasn’t “in love” with Richard as I understood that phrase with all of my 19 year old wisdom.  I didn’t have that burning feeling in the pit of my stomach that told me he was the right person for me.   When he wasn’t around I didn’t feel agitated and anxious like something was missing.   I had that feeling for David so I had to be “in love”.

Why am I lately so filled with regrets over lost loves?   Have I really missed opportunities for love or am I just experiencing some middle age pangs of regret for my youthful choices?    It is one of the principal ironies of life that we make the most important decisions of our life when we have absolutely no idea what we are doing – like choosing a spouse and a career.  I found myself continually daydreaming along the lines of”What if?”  What if I had married Richard was a question that was haunting me.  

Do I really believe that certain relationships are meant to be or conversely not be?    Do I believe in fate?   Did I make the right decision or a grievous mistake?  It was so long ago who really cares and why does it matter?   As I passed the halfway point in my life I seem haunted by a need to find answers to those questions or somehow to put the inquiries to rest- permanently.   That question was pressing in on me as I had just ended another marriage – my third.  How did I end up here I wondered.   I have experienced so much adversity and my life has been such a struggle.   How do I make sense of it all?  Sifting through my past relationships seemed like as good a starting point as any. 

QUERY:  Can you recall an early love?  Is there a lesson or any wisdom to be gleaned from looking back over that first love?  Have we glorified it in our mind to an unhealthy level?  Is it interfering with our satisfaction in our present relationship?