Teach them How to Love
Keep in mind that you are the primary model for your children on how husbands and wives are to relate to and love one another. You are going to have conflicts in your marriage. How you resolve your conflicts in large measure will determine how effectively your children manage their conflicts with their spouses. Coco and I did hit a spot where we simply could not live together. It happened during Laura’s first year in college. So, we separated for about three months while we worked through things with a marriage counselor. It was unsettling for our children, no doubt. But we worked it out and reconciled.
An ever-conscious thought for me during this period was that divorce was an unacceptable option. It would not only be terrible for our immediate family, but I feared it would make divorce more likely for future generations. Use all the resources you can to choose the right mate. Then, when your marriage runs onto the rocks, which it almost certainly will, remember your wedding vows, and how critical it is that you be a model to your children on how to forgive and how to love. Do as we did and find a way to make your marriage work. (It is incalculable how much our family would have lost had Coco and I failed to reconcile.)
Other steps to prepare them to be on their own.
After our children were twelve or so, Coco and I never spied on them or tried to catch them doing bad things. Our approach was to say, “We have taught you right from wrong. You know what we expect of you. We believe in you, and we trust that you will choose to do the right thing. Don’t disappoint us.” And by and large, none of them did.
When our children left home and went off to college, they hit the ground running. Within a year or two after they started college, I stopped paying all the various college related expenses. Prior to the beginning of each semester, I wrote each child one check to cover all their expenses for the upcoming semester. It was up to them to pay for tuition, books, room, board, and their living expenses. No child received enough to make it without working. So, they all had to get jobs while they were in college to make ends meet. Initially we thought not to provide a car their freshman year. That did not work well at the colleges our children attended (Ole Miss, UGA and College of Charleston). We learned it was best to provide them with a car when they left for college.
We made it crystal clear to our children that we would cover most of their costs for the first four years after they graduated from high school. After that, they were on their own. Rob was the only one who came to live with us after he graduated from college and that was only for a few months, and then he launched his landscape company. (It is possible that Coco funneled a little money to some of the children initially for a little while here and there, but it was not expected, not much, it was not for long, and it never came from me.)
This ends this series on raising children. Overall, what we did worked well. Hopefully, some of our practices will prove helpful to others.
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