I wish we’d known there are rules for raising kids. We just flew by the seat of our pants, which is a saying that makes no sense. No wonder my kids question everything I tell them. 

Here we are, with the children back in school, or in the case of homeschoolers, kids AND parents hitting the books. The college kids are off to their new adventures, just barely beginning to realize how much they miss Mom’s casseroles, and laundry room with the built-in laundress. 

I recently read a list of rules for raising kids and was mildly surprised that someone would make a list and expect anyone to read it. Nobody reads anymore, including homeschoolers.

Yesterday I took my homeschooled pool-boy to the library to return my book and he dreamily looked around, then announced, “I’ve never been in here.”

What? He’s 13! By the time I finished lecturing him on the attributes of reading, I think he mainly just wanted to find a different ride home. I have that effect on people.

Reading wasn’t on the rule list for raising kids so I’m adding it. Every night during our offspring’s elementary years, while I cooked dinner, they’d lie on the floor and read to me.

They all make more money in a year than their dad and I have accumulated in our lifetime so we’ll say it was the reading. I want credit for doing one thing right.   

There was a rule to hug and kiss the kids frequently. Well, we did that every night when putting them to bed, even in high school, and every morning as they left for the bus. During middle school, after sports practice, when they got in the truck they’d lean up for a smooch.

Their friends would attempt to torture them about it, but our boys would rather take the ribbing from their buddies than have their friends see me jump over the seat for a hug. I’m not sure why my kids didn’t grow up to steal hubcaps. 

One rule was to never lie to your kids. Uh, well, I did. And not just about Santa and the Easter Bunny. No, I was more sinister. In the summer, while working on our properties cleaning, raking or picking up rocks, I’d tell them everybody’s kids were working that day and it was the law. I had no intention of suffering alone. 

The list maker said to let kids solve their own fights. Our kids rarely had fist fights because I did get in the middle of it, saying, “If anybody’s doing any hitting around here, it’ll be me, so you better find something to do or I’ll create something really fun for you, and when I say, ‘really fun,’ I don’t mean it.”

I have a friend who is CEO of a large corporation, and she keeps a sign on her office door, “If you’re coming in to complain, obviously you don’t have enough work to do and I can give you some more.” I didn’t need a sign. 

On the list was to teach them to survive, and we did that by hunting, fishing and camping, but they knew the biggest threat to their existence was when they sat down nightly to eat my cooking.

The kids clung to life and are grown, but Gar continues to be in peril, and don’t think he doesn’t know he puts himself in harm’s way nightly. He’s a gambling man. 

The author suggested allowing children to see the real you, including crying. C.S. Lewis said, “Crying is all right in its way while it lasts but you have to stop sooner or later and then you still have to decide what to do.”

My kids feel they’re being tortured if they have to witness A: Me crying or B: Me deciding what to do. Basically, they’d tell me to my face not to engage in either one. 

The other rules, including telling your kids you love them, teaching them about money, manners, relationships, and discipline, we did, and our kids do with their kids. There’s one thing our Texas children do that I think is brilliant and didn’t even know was a possibility.

Each night, after the grandchildren get out of the shower, they put on the clothes they’ll wear the next day. They actually wear them to bed. How ingenious. Mornings are cut in half without girls yelling, “I can’t find my yellow shirt!”

Or worse, “My sister is wearing my yellow shirt!” That’s the stuff that’ll kickstart a mother’s crying.