Raising Future Adults

My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it. -- Mark Twain My children were a real handful but I enjoyed staying honme with them and raising them. Being a good mom is one of my favorite things. I was able to give them what some people would likely call unconditional love but my oldest son once pointed out to me that a mother's love is actually highly conditional: It is conditional on you being her child. Perhaps he has clarity about that detail in part because, as a professor of mine once said, "I am the primitive of my way." So I taught him that from an early age even though having him later reflect that back to me was eye opening for me. He was a very bright child, which is part of why he was such a pain to raise, but it came with the silver lining that I was able to engage him intellectually from an early age in a way that is probably not common. When he was four years old, I told him he really needed to deal with some of his ...