D1 and I got into a big argument last year when she told me she was going to Cartagena, Colombia. I freaked out when I heard she was going to Colombia. Over the next few days she kept on sending me information about the place until I felt more comfortable. The funny thing was her godmother, a very good friend of mine, unbeknown to us was going there with her husband for few days as well. They took D1 and her BF out a few times while they were in town. D1 thought I orchestrated the whole thing.
Our job is to worry and nag. Our kids know that. They need to just nod and smile sometimes, but most of the time we are right. My mother still gets upset with me sometimes. She likes to say, “I will say what I have to say. You can decide whether you want to listen or not.”
@wis75, my older brother has a tradition of walking on Lake Mendota very late in the season. I would not be surprised if he breaks through one of these years.
I think I need more context. Where is this lake? Were there other people also walking on the ice? I have an old black and white picture of my parents with my older brother walking on a frozen lake. My parents also wouldn’t have known the difference between thinner ice and thicker ice. Sounds kind of dangerous when I say it like that. But in the background, you see a lot of people taking a stroll on the ice. In fact, you can see it’s a lake in the middle of a park. Now it doesn’t sound so dangerous but quite ordinary.
Well, my kids know I worry about them and am always warning about something or other.
Sometimes I do a service and other times not so much. But neither has de-friended me yet because I showed concern for their well-being.
"D1 and I got into a big argument last year when she told me she was going to Cartagena, Colombia. I freaked out when I heard she was going to Colombia. "
As you probably know now @oldfort, Colombia is a pretty safe country these days - not like it was a decade or two ago. Beautiful place, friendly people.
Well, if you DON’T want to see pictures of him on FB anymore, this was the perfect way to do it (and I need a face-palm emoticon).
And for those not proficient with FB, there are ways to stay friends with people, but they see nothing. It just looks like you don’t post.
So if you’re like, wow, my kid doesn’t post much, either he’s done this to you or he’s using tumblr, instagram, or snapchat.
If you want to stay connected to your adult kid via social media, you can’t crab AT ALL. It’s so easy to tune out the crabbers, whack jobs, people who post food made with Pillsbury products, and bigoted aunts…
D1 has jumped out of a perfectly good plane twice, hang glided off of high Alps peaks, almost been swept away in a US western national park and walked the Inca trail in Peru for days, to state some of her activities.
I have learned that I cannot control what she does. It is her decision as an adult. I have also learned that, because I have no control, I prefer to hear about it after the fact. IOW, she has landed safe and sound or is back safe and sound.
My oldest kid joined the military at 18 and promptly got deployed to the Middle East. I guess I could have warned him about how dangerous that was, but I had to assume that he knew the risks. So nowadays when he goes out on his boat and goes diving for crabs or whatever, I suppose I could still use “mom privilege” and warn him about the dangers of drowning, but again, at 31, I’m going to guess he’s aware. Sometimes his job requires him to work on unfinished buildings and rooftops in terrible weather, and I suppose I could warn him, but you know…
My point is that at some point you have to assume that your kid is going to do things that are out of your comfort zone and “warning” them with pointed questions about the specific safety requirements are going to sound anxious and helicoptery. But I guess that it can make a parent feel better. My kid would just shake his head and go on about his business if I worried aloud or via email over something like walking on ice.
I DID absolutely worry the entire time my son was deployed. But I kept it to myself. And I do worry when my older D does her “death sports” like rock climbing, white water rafting, etc. But like her brother, she is a grown up and warning her to make sure she knows how to use a harness or has the right shoes or what have you isn’t going to actually keep her safer.
S does rock climbing, which does make me slightly worried, but he’s generally a very careful guy, I don’t lose sleep. He’s not interested in the more dangerous sports and I rarely ever get to see photos of him. Neither he nor D have friended me, so I can’t lose sleep over photos of them.
A kid was helicopter evaced from my kid’s campus yesterday after a bike accident (friend of my kid, injuries now are known to not be life threatening but include concussion). Not wearing a helmet. I have had no luck encouraging my kid to wear a helmet on her skateboard or other wheels on campus. I don’t need to see a FB photo to know that my kid is doing something I consider dangerous.
Not sure what I would do about the ice photos — we lived for a long time where the ice gets so thick people drive on it and ice fish. So I know it CAN be perfectly safe if there has been a prolonged cold period and there is no inflow or outflow near where they are walking.
Although I appreciate the stories of your kids who participate in risky adventures, I think there is a difference between doing that which you are trained to do or have knowledge. Just blindly walking out on ice when that is not something you typically do just seems foolhardy.
But i do appreciate hearing things are just out of our control. I do understand that. I agree that it makes me feel better to say something. If God forbid, he ever did it again and fell through the ice, I could never forgive myself.
This understandable reaction of parents…especially moms is one good reason why I never told my own parents about some idiotically risky stunts I’ve done on a lark or on a self-dare which even my male peer friends felt was excessive until well-after the fact*.
This also extends to not mentioning the high risk stunts my friends pulled to their parents.
Incidentally, this is one good reason why my friends make it a rule not to “friend” our parents** unless they agree beforehand that they must assume we know the risks and are fully competent by not nagging or otherwise using it as an opportunity to lecture us on the dangers like we’re minors or risk being unfriended.
Talking months or years after the incident concerned.
** Not an issue with me as one parent doesn’t do social media and the other has long accepted “safety lectures” are a “waste of time”.
You’re much stronger and restrained than an ex-GF’s aunt who wasn’t able to keep her concerns to herself about the dangers of her son serving as an Air Force Officer on deployment to Iraq.
Her need to frequently voice her concerns and fears were such it ended up damaging her relationship with her son as he resented her for in his mind guilting him into giving up cherished plans to stay in the AF for a full 20+ year career after 9.5 years.
@conmama, please forgive me for mentioning this, but didn’t I read in another thread that you lost a close family member a few months ago after a very short illness? Perhaps that has made this more of an issue than it would have been at another time. And perhaps you might mention this to your son.
Yes. You have to let them learn, and hope that they don’t die. That’s life.
Statistically the most dangerous thing my two daughters do is drive to and from school every day. I get a twinge of anxiety (still!) every time they walk out the door in the morning.
Both my babies in a very fast tin can where you have to make the right decisions constantly at a high rate of speed, or you can die. It is what it is.
I rock climb (started at 48 and wished I had done it when I was in my 20s but I listened to my parents). The only time I was nervous was in the gym when my then 14-year-old daughter first belayed me. Giggles and a slack line didn’t instill confidence. I yelled at her.
I did know a kid who fell through ice. Fortunately, the water level was low and he could stand up. It was still scary for all of us young folk, word ripped through the neighborhood. I agree with dffb that a lot of places in upper reaches drive trucks over the ice to test it. I don’t know where OP’s son is.
Mine have done things that tremendously worried me and I wasn’t afraid to say, Hey! and share a piece of my mind. But there are plenty of things I did that I won’t even tell them about, that vie for risky or stupid. Don’t need to give them ideas…or excuses. I agree, we are mama bears. (Or papa bears, if that applies.) It’s fine to ask, how did you know if it was safe? And, what would you have done, if…?
