Bright and early one morning, after too many trips out of bed to remind my 4-year-old stepson to keep his voice down, my husband awoke, and I promptly rolled over in an attempt to get a few more minutes of sleep. Not long after, the 4-year-old woke the six-year-old with his early morning not-whispers, and they proceeded to get louder and louder. As I listened to them get louder and louder, I grumbled to my husband that the kids were getting pretty loud, and his reply of “they’re fine, it was just once,” was not anything I was willing to leave well enough alone. “But they won’t realize they’re being that loud unless we tell them. If I swerve off the road ‘just once,’ I’ll still crash and die. Ohmygoodness, we are the rumble strip of their lives!” We giggled and resigned ourselves to the fact that there would be no more extra sleeping that day.
The cleverness of my metaphor stuck with me throughout the day, and I considered the purpose of rumble strips and the purpose of parenting and how the two really do, or should, compare.
Stay the Course
Rumble strips are there to let us know when we’re going off course. The purpose of the rumble strip isn’t for us to keep one tire on it the whole route. It doesn’t program our GPS for us or give us constant feedback. But it does let us know when we’re going in the wrong direction. It’s our responsibility after that to correct our course. As parents, our job isn’t to do everything for our children. We don’t fix all their problems or right all their wrongs. But we do need to let our kids know when they’ve gotten off course. This means reminders to be polite, share, speak respectfully to others. We help them work through fights with friends, feeling left out, and sibling interactions, so that they can learn to correct their relational courses.
Guidelines, Not Maps
The rumble strip doesn’t overstep. In bad weather and low visibility, we rely on that rumble strip to be there when we need it. And it rarely fails. But if we’re cruising along, staying in our lane, and driving “right”? We don’t hear from the rumble strip (except for that one strip at the top of 295, where the rumble strip crosses into the slow lane for a stretch. THAT rumble strip is totally out of line). Our kids need to know we’re there to help when they need it. We, on the other hand, need to step back and let them set their own course. Providing guidelines to stay within as they learn is meaningful. Mapping out their personalities and friendships and entire lives is not.
Forgive and Forget
The rumble strip doesn’t hold a grudge. We can hit that rumble strip 4000 times, and it will continue to gently remind us we’re off course. The rumble strip doesn’t tell us directly what we’ve done wrong. It provides a gentle reminder that we’re headed the wrong way. Once we correct our course, the rumble strip shuts up. We don’t hear about all the other times we’ve hit the rumble strip. We don’t get judged for the underlying thoughts or carelessness that perhaps led us to the rumble strip. If we want our kids to continue to rely on us when they need us, we’ve got to stick to the present. If we continually remind them of all the other times we’ve helped them, they’ll stop coming to us. Life is hard, and they need to know they can count on us for direction, regardless of how many times they’ve needed it.
Don’t Expect Thanks, Yet
There are times when perhaps we’re trying to take an exit too early, or we’ve glanced back to see which child is really doing all the taunting, and we hit that rumble strip in normal daily life. Times like these, we get annoyed at that rumble for calling out that misstep so obnoxiously. But for the most part, we are all grateful for rumble strips. Especially in storms or dangerous driving conditions, we really need that help to stay the course. We appreciate the guidance. It is not until we are older that we appreciate the guidance of our parents. To our kids, we’re sometimes strict and mean and “you don’t love me.” To our teenagers, we’re, like, the worst ever. Usually, when we know we messed up, we’re annoyed by the guidelines. When we figure out the purpose of the guidelines, we’re usually grateful.
Someday, when they are happy and healthy adults, with good relationship and problem-solving skills, they will thank us, whether out loud or internally, for all the rumbling we’ve done on their behalf.