A few interesting articles I have read

I read a few articles in the last few weeks that I found rather ironic.

The first article talked about the number of people that are hiring "life coaches". In case you don't know what a life coach is, it is a person that teaches you the life skills to get ahead in today's society. Whether it is learning "how to dress for success" (do not, I repeat do not wear that cute little black bra under your white tank top, it just isn't appropriate office wear), "how to win friends and influence people" or "nutrition and balanced dieting", there is a person out there just waiting to teach you all these things, for a nominal fee of course.

The next article I read was about so called "helicopter parents" that "hover" and prevent their children from growing up and becoming responsible adults. The thing I find ironic about both articles is the fact that when I was growing up (and I know it was last century) I had a life coach that taught me all the things I needed to learn to "dress for success" and "how to win friends and influence people". Granted the last skill still could use some fine tuning on my part. Anyway, I digress, the life coach who taught me these skills were........are you ready, my parents.

I guess now a days, I could blame every little set back in my life (and their have been a few) on the fact that I had helicopter parents who hovered and kicked my butt when it needed it most. I come from very sturdy, hard headed country stock, and my Dad explained more than once in a dinner time lecture, what skills were needed for life. My Mom taught me how to dress properly by refusing to let me leave the house with that little black bra showing under my shirt. Skirts were to be worn the proper length and make up shouldn't look like I was auditioning for a clown contest.

I am sad to say that I learned my parenting lessons at the hands of "helicopter parents" and therefore have been somewhat of a helicopter parent myself. We explained more than once to a child that 10 p.m. on a snowy winter night is not the best time to head through a very dangerous canyon to visit friends that were attending college in another town. Finally, my husband explained, "I would rather have you alive and mad at me than dead or a vegetable that I have to take care of for the rest of your life". Also explained were the rules of "choice and consequence"and "he who pays the mortgage makes the rules". Then we helped them learn how to make right choices and stood behind them when they paid the consequences of their bad choices.

I am not saying I have perfect children, how could they be with the example they had for a mother. I was always saying "I am my father's daughter" and have heard my son say more than once that "I am my mother's son". In our family, we learn life's lessons the hard way. But I would like to say that the fact that their father and I have hovered over... school activities, church activities, visits with various police officers and judges, doctor's visits and E/R visits, weddings, divorces, broken hearts etc.....have contributed some way to the fact that they both are good law fearing, tax paying contributing-to-society citizens. Now if I could just figure out a way to bill them a nominal fee for the "life coach" hours they have absorbed.