They Are Diamond And Gold

The Boy's school had music performances this week. The choirs were wonderful. Some of the kids looked and sang like angels. On Thursday and Friday nights, some of The Boy's friends came to spend the night. Last night, four of them ended up at the house.

One of them asked me what The Man and I did for a living. The others listened and nodded. The Boy ran away and said, Whatever you say, mom.

At breakfast, one of the boys offered to brings things out from the kitchen. Later, I overhear them talking about the cost of post-secondary education and what marks are needed to get into some university programs. Either they are into their Career Studies course or they are actually thinking about their future.

After they left, I went down to the basement to see everything cleaned up, folded up, and put away.

This is all in context of last night at my book club. The women and I were talking about how our kids are doing. Four of the women have daughters who just turned 18. All four girls maintain they are not sexually active. Only one has a steady boyfriend.

Our children seem to behave differently from what we read about teenage behaviour in mass media. They are not into sex and drugs, they are not into glam, designer labels and plastic surgery, they are not concerned about their weight. They are aware they have peers who are into that, but they and their closest friends are not. Now, one of the girls did cause her mother grief when she phoned for a ride after a party at 2 am, but only after she got on the bus, sent her friends home and got off the bus early by herself to puke in the gutter from having had too much to drink. But other than that, she's a good kid. All these girls, young women now, have always said hello to their mother's friends and their moms tell me about the special mother and daughter outings they have every once in a while.

As mothers, we wondered what's going on. Should we congratulate ourselves on having imparted good family value and raised reasonable, relatively innocent kids? Have the media exaggerated, catastrophied and sensationalized teen behaviour? Are our kids the odd balls? After a little bit of discussion, I decided I didn't care how they got that way. We probably are a fairly conservative bunch of parents living sheltered lives. But somehow, we've raised great kids. Generally, they are good company, they are respectful and responsible, they show good judgement, they enjoy themselves, they do well enough at school, they have goals, they are interested, and they get into enough trouble to be interesting.

I don't think I can speak as highly of myself at their age.