Boy to the World: Vaya Con Dios

Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.

~ Galatians 5:25 NIV

“I thought I had all the controls in place,” she lamented. My friend and I were having coffee recently and she mentioned her high-school aged sons’ “inappropriate” internet behavior.

I didn’t ask specifically what was inappropriate. I am still at the stage where I am mostly dealing with silly and annoying songs on Youtube. I have to endure the likes of Charlie the Unicorn or the Potter Puppet Pals incessantly, which is what I get for insisting the kids use the laptop in public areas of the house, I imagine.

Though, one time, one of my older two asked me for my email address so that an online game site could send him a user name and password validation link. I came over to the kitchen table and had a look. The form he was filling out listed his birthday with a date in 1996. “You typed in the wrong year for your birthday,” I informed him.

“No, I did that on purpose, Mom. You have to be at least 13 to play this game.”

“But you’re not 13.”

“I know, but so-and-so plays this game and he’s a year younger than me!”

“Do you think so-and-so’s mom knows this?”

“Uhmmm…I dunno…”

“Do you think it’s okay to lie about your age?”

“Well, no, Mom. But it’s only a game, everyone does it.”

“No, not everyone does it. You’re not gonna do it.”

“But Mom!”

“It’s not like we’ve never discussed this. You signed an acceptable-use policy for school. Shouldn’t the same rules apply here? When you sign something like that, it means you agree – you give your word, your promise!”

“Awww, Mom!”

His feigned outrage was obviously half-hearted.

I don’t think anyone (but my youngest) is really in such a hurry to grow up – recently they all insisted that an animated movie featuring falsetto-voiced rodents was the absolute only thing they would see albeit the several other choices at the cineplex. Because it was sold out, we traipsed to another theater, and even though the movie was even more annoying than any of their Youtube videos, it made me happy to know that they didn’t want anything more sophisticated.

I told my friend, “Imagine if you kept your kids sheltered from MTV, the Internet…never let them go to the movies or the mall…just imagine what would happen when they left home for college, or whatever…”

She rolled her eyes. “I can’t even think of it.”

A few days later, I was reviewing the Boy Scouts of America’s anti-drug pamphlet with my oldest. I cringed at the amount of detail about huffing common household chemicals or overdosing on medicine cabinet staples like pain relievers or decongestant. I recalled the last time I was doing my nails how one of my sons had told me he liked the smell of nail polish remover.

“Put that bottle down, honey, you don’t want to inhale any vapors” – or did he?

The childproof bottle caps on the acetaminophen and cold medicine don’t stop any of the children in my house. “I’ll get it, Mom,” my youngest said when I asked him if he could just hang on a few minutes.

“Oh, no you won’t, honey – you’re not old enough to do that!”

“Yes, I am, Mom. I’m four and a half, now!” A study in worlds colliding, he struts around with his hand-me-down Nintendo “DeeYesssss!” with his lovey slung over his shoulder à la Linus of the Peanuts gang.

One of our jobs as parents is to grow our children into fully functioning, self-supporting adults. One day they’re going to be on their own, so I suppose they have to have some knowledge about what’s wrong, in contrast with what’s right. Similarly, how are they going to learn conflict resolution if there’s never a conflict? (This must be the reason Santa brought only one Wii controller to our house this Christmas.) And how do we learn patience, if we never have opportunities in which to practice it? (I have stopped praying for patience; surely I am blessed with ample opportunities already.)

Of course we try to protect our kids the best we can, but the reality is they have to leave the house sooner or later. You let them go and you hope that they remember the things you’ve taught them: say please and thank you, look both ways, love God and love your neighbor, change your socks and underwear, count your blessings, clear your plate, just say no to drugs, brush your teeth....

I let go and let God a little bit every day when they go to school. Vaya con Dios, boys, I pray silently, as the bus pulls away. Go with God.

The mother of three sons, Caroline Poser lives with her family in Groton. She works full-time as a software marketing professional and moonlights as an author. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies, most recently in Chicken Soup for the Dog Lover’s Soul: What I Learned from the Dog. www.CarolinePoser.com.