It happens way too fast

My son is 16 years old today. Dang, how did that happen?

He's 6'3" and towers over me. When did that happen?

He has started the "take me to get my driving permit" chant. I could definitely have waited for that to happen....

I think of seeing his 4-year-old self drenched from head to toe in the water he was just told not to play in. I think of looking out my kitchen window to see his 5-year-old self peeing in the yard, instead of coming to the civilized bathroom. And he's going to drive?

In two more years, he'll be headed to college. He'll be handling his own life, having his own life that I'm not part of. That aches. I miss him already.

However, there are days when I want it to could come faster! He can make me completely insane! Adolescence is not easy. For anyone involved.

You know what I really love?? People who have toddlers and give me advice on teenagers. I have to smile and laugh, and say, "Oh look! Your little darling thinks that Hot Wheel is going to fit up his nose!" Yeah, come talk to me when your worries are about what other people are trying to get him to put up his nose....

The phrase I've heard a lot lately is Bible-based: "Train them up in the way of righteousness and they will follow the right path when they are older." Okay, so I don't know the exact reference, but that's how people use it. And it's just not so.

My parents raised my sister and I in the same household, with the same rules, that same upbringing. However, as teenagers, I kept on the straight-and-narrow (for the most part!) and she got so far off the path that she needed a machete to find her way back to it. Some days, we held our breath when the phone rang.

You can "train" a child all you like, but they are still an individual, with their own thoughts, wants, desires, weaknesses, and strengths. They make their own choices and learn their own lessons. This is why I get pissed when I hear someone whining about "I'm this way because my mother did this....my father did that...." (And I mean literally whining, not just conversing. Some people can talk about their past without it being a continual trauma.) I can show them many examples of people who bettered their lives to spite what others had done to them. I suppose it's a matter of how you use the experience.

Ultimately, you are still responsible for your own life, and your own choices, and your own consequences. I can raise my kids with all of the best I can give them, but it's their choice how they carry it into their future. The thing is, it's their future, and they are the only ones who will walk that path.