Thursday, February 17, 2011

No matter what age you are you’ve heard of Billy Ray Cyrus, Hannah Montana or both.  GQ has an upcoming interview with Billy Ray who has apparently seen the light and the major mistakes he made as a dad. MaryBeth Hicks reports that Billy Ray admits that he was a poor disciplinarian and worst of all that he sought to be his daughter’s friend, rather than a strong father. Billy Ray admits in the GQ interview that he had lost control of his daughter and lost the essence of his family. Strong family leaders know when to fold the tent and circle the wagons. In their case, it might have meant walking away from Disney and all the glamour and financial success that was actually tearing them apart. In our lives, that might mean saying no to things that overload our schedules or create stress in our relationships.  Billy Ray learned the hard way that kids don't need friendship from their parents, they need strong mothers and fathers who guard and protect them and who make wise choices on behalf of their families. Anyone can be a buddy to our kids, but playing the role of mom and dad is something only we can do.

This story made me recall an event at the Mall recently. Shopping with my daughter we witnessed a 15 or so aged girl speaking to her mother. The child was screaming, loudly, that she wanted ‘this cell phone’ not that one. Her mother obviously sticker price shocked, was trying to get her little angel to be reasonable. The kid would have no part of it. In the end the kid won out. I looked at my own daughter and went to say ‘if that was you…’ she said, ‘mom, I would never’. But never is a tricky word.

I’m guilty of being my children’s friend at times instead of being the parent. I know it, I own it. But funny thing – it’s always come back to bite me you know where. We can’t change the rules, we must obey the rules. We are the adults, we are the parents, we DO know better. Kids are resilient they’ll get over us saying NO. Okay maybe it will take a day or two and a lot of slammed doors but so what. In the end we’ll have taught them something and isn’t that our job? We can’t have it both ways. We can’t demand responsible, moral, good kids when we don’t deliver on the steps to get them to that point.

The same can be said about our Government. We want them to say NO to more spending, raising a debt ceiling, more taxes etc. We need to be the parents in this argument. If we cave in, then we have no business demanding a responsible government because we will, in essence, have become the enabler for their bad behavior too.  

Moral of the story: NO must mean NO in all aspects of our life or we’ll deserve exactly what we get…an out of control government and rotten ‘give me’ children…which will result in the ultimate nanny state.  Join me in saying NO. It’s hard yet worthwhile and it does get easier with time. I promise.