Raising Kids With Character

Let me tell you what I love about Netflix, it has a bunch of old TV series and movies that I watched as a kid and find appalling as an adult. My parents obviously didn’t keep very close tabs on the programs I watched (other than restricting me from Smurfs, Care Bears and Thundercats) or I simply broke the rules and watched in utter rebellion (Simpsons).

Well I can’t say that I was ever a huge Gilmore Girls fan and it’s not like my parents would have had much to say about it anyways because I was already married when the show originally aired, but I do admit that my wife and I did watch a few episodes (ok seasons) together. Recently we decided to go on a little trip down Nostalgia Lane and watched a bunch of episodes (ok ALL the episodes in every season) on Netflix. It was a fun little adventure and we laughed a lot and I don’t think my morality was over affected. In fact there may have even been some positive side effects from submitting ourselves to 7 seasons of episodes back to back to back. (No, not all in one sitting! Come on this isn’t Lord of the Rings.)

“And what pray tell,” you ask, “were those positive side effects?”

Thanks, I’d love to tell you.

1. Sexual purity is a slippery slope. You might be surprised to find out that I’m not an ultra-conservative when it comes to purity but I’m certainly NOT ultra-liberal either. I tend to think there are good reasons to practice abstinence and reserve your sexuality for marriage, which I believe was its intended place. But I’m ok with kids dating, having special friends, kissing within reason when things get more serious and that sort of thing. But I do know something else, once you have gone to a certain point with a person, you will almost certainly go farther the next time or with the next person. This is why I believe restraint is so critical!

Now in Gilmore Girls, Rory Gilmore, Lorelai’s daughter, follows her mother’s path with relationships and we see her date her fair share of guys throughout the seasons. That’s fine, although slightly neurotic at some points, but while the relationships start out innocent, I remember thinking in one scene where she is kissing her boyfriend, “Oh boy, she’s pretty young, I wonder where the producers are going to go with this.” And they had to go all the way. Why? Because just like in real life, the story needs to increase in excitement and intensity. So by the end of the series it had turned into a ridiculous soap opera. Too bad really because the first few seasons were full of witty dialogue and apparently you can’t be witty when your mouth is otherwise occupied.

2. Parents are all hypocrites but that doesn’t mean you condone immoral behaviour. Look, we all have things in our past that we don’t want our kids to do. Sometimes they cause us to blush, or feel sick to our stomachs and sometimes we can laugh about them and our former stupidity. But when it comes to moral lapses, such as getting pregnant as a teenager, as Lorelai Gilmore did with Rory, we don’t have to dismiss our children’s own poor judgement for fear of looking the hypocrite. There is some wise saying somewhere that suggests that a wise person learns from the fool. As parents we are right to talk honestly about the mistakes we made and to help our children from making the SAME ones!

Yes, you’re cheeky grade 7 boy will call you out on it and tell you that you can’t judge him for simply doing the same dumb thing you did at his age, but then you can rightly turn back towards him and call him a fool. Let me know how that goes over.

3. You need to respect your parents, even when you are an adult. My son and I were recently watching some Youtube videos of some idiot high school students jumping over desks and trashing them and I looked at him and asked him if anything like that would ever even cross his mind to attempt and he said no. It wouldn’t have crossed mine either because not only did I have a respect for people in general and those older or authority specifically, I also had a respect for property and material things. I personally think disrespect is epidemic among Generation-Entitlement.

But this is what you can’t do. You can’t disrespect the cops after they pull you over for clearly blowing the speed limit, you can’t bad mouth a teacher without some context to their disciplinary actions against your child (or homework assignment for that matter) and you can’t speak poorly about your parents, regardless of your age, and expect your children to be respectful! That would be hypocrisy!

I marvel at parents who bemoan the lack of character in our youth all while demonstrating precisely the same lack of character! One of the themes of Gilmore Girls is Lorelai’s dysfunctional relationship with her extremely wealthy parents. It is actually ridiculous and the producers do a great job of making her parents look like total nobs, but when a 30-something year old is giving non-stop eye-rolls behind her parents’ backs, you kind of wonder who the child really is.

I believe we need to honour our parents to our children, even when they have been poor parents. I know there are really bad parents out there, but I want my kids to see them as broken people, not just evil people. It’s not always easy, but it is always better.

4. You really shouldn’t be your daughter’s best friend. Oh my goodness parents! Could we stop acting like our kids’ best friend and start acting like their only parents? I get it! I honestly do, but there is a reason that throwing a group of kids onto a deserted island ends in disaster; there aren’t any parents!

So there you have it! Lorelai Gilmore is not the model parent! I’m not sure anyone actually thought of her that way, but at least she gave me an opportunity to address some things that really annoy me.

Next post: “Everything MacGyver taught me was a lie.”