Learning the Hard Way

The Radio Interview last night was fun. Other than Pat calling me Gloria and me beginning to spell my email address as "M as in Frank" everything went pretty well. It was a fun gig.

Did anyone else have a chance to see it?

Afterwards we had cake to celebrate Dominyk's confirmation as a family -- everyone except Ricardo who is currently on strike. I refer to it as that when he pulls back from every family activity because he is being stubborn and refusing to comply with the simplest of family expectations. He is almost 18 and I think has always seen this as freedom day -- except that he has no job, no money, is in debt to us because of the car accident, and has no where to go.

Mind you, this won't mean that he doesn't try to go anyway -- but wrestling season is just starting, not to mention a Minnesota winter, so it wouldn't be a good idea for him to venture out on his own penniless and homeless. But, as I just said, that won't mean he doesn't try it anyway. The beauty of it though is that once he finds out he can't make it on his own, he will be back -- and hopefully appreciate us more. He is a very naive kid who has only been in the country for 7 years and has not ventured out to explore anything about the world except for one friend's home in the trailer park, where he dreams of living. However, I've been in communication with that family and they have said repeatedly that they are not planning to allow him to move in at 18. I guess we'll just see what happens. December 10th is his 18th birthday.

You know it is interesting how some personalities simply have to learn the hard way. I was the kind of kid who was given lots of advice as a pre-teen and early teenager about life and I simply listened to that advice and made choices accordingly. By the time I was 16 I had two jobs where I worked until I left for college, knowing I had to pay for it by myself. I had a goal, I listened to people smarter and more experienced than me, and I reached it.

We have a few kids like that. They listen to our advice and slowly make progress. However, we have some that absolutely have to learn the hard way. They can't seem to heed the wisdom of others and have to make their own mistakes. The challenging part of parenting them is to watch it all happen, knowing full well that nothing we say is going to make much of a difference....

Sigh.

Time to go wake them up and head into another Monday. I'm thrilled that I don't have any appointments out of town this week. It will be nice to stay home.

Anyone have a chance to listen to the radio last night? If not, the archive should be available soon and I'll link to it when it is.