Jumping Off Bridges (and other instances of parenting peer pressure)

If your friends all jumped off a bridge – would you do it too? Remember when your parents uttered this phrase to you in the hopes that you would actually put some individualized thought into your actions and behaviour? I can’t even count how many times I’ve said this very same phrase to my own kids. Now I’m saying it to someone else. Someone I never thought I’d be saying it to.

Myself.

The more I think about it, the more I realize there’s nothing actually wrong with jumping off a bridge. So long as it’s something you truly want to be doing. And it’s safe and fun and you have no qualms about doing so. And afterward, you don’t regret it. At the same time, there’s nothing wrong with thinking about it first. Maybe asking some trusted peers what they think about bridge jumping? And then making an informed decision after some careful weigh-in.

However – there is something amiss when the only reason you’re bridge-jumping is because everyone else is doing it. Or because someone convinced you you’re lame otherwise. Or because someone made you feel stupid for standing on the edge, peering over and deciding not to take the plunge. Or because your own parental insecurities have been triggered and now your internal dialogue is casting doubt on your stance.

I’m referring to my incessant second guessing when it comes to my parenting decisions. I hate to admit this – but there’s something that niggles at me when I say “no” and other people are saying “yes”. I begin to over-analyze and question myself:  Am I being too strict? Too unreasonable? Too inflexible? Too old-fashioned? Are my rules too rigid?

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My 14-year-old daughter was recently invited to a party on a school night that went until 10:30pm. I informed her I’d be picking her up at 9:45pm. There was some minor, to-be-anticipated upset:

Everybody else gets to stay until the end.
This is a special occasion – I’m not asking to stay out this late every school night.
You are so unfair and the meanest person ever.

While I didn’t immediately respond, in the recesses of my mind, I wondered: Was I being unreasonable? I mean – a parent obviously planned this party with 14-year-olds in mind and came to the conclusion that a 10:30pm end time on a school night was appropriate. Who am I to question that? After all, there are plenty of instances my children have been at home, wide awake at 10:30pm on a school night.

Nevertheless, my gut told me that 9:45pm was the ideal pick-up time and 10:30pm was not. So I offered up two solutions and left the final choice up to my daughter: 

a) I could pick her up from the party at 9:45pm

OR

b) she could skip the party altogether

I’m sure you can figure out which option was selected. But here’s the funniest part of the story (and where I learned my lesson).

When I arrived at our appointed 9:45pm pick-up time, most of my kid’s close friends were nowhere to be found. When I questioned her about this in the car, she informed me that they had already been picked up.

“Really? Hmmmm – I thought you said everybody was staying til 10:30 and that I was being completely unfair to you.”

There was some smirking happening from the passenger seat and it was directed at me. I basked in that smirk because it was conciliatory. It meant that she had tried to outplay me – but I had won.

Another incident occurred during a recent sleepover my daughter attended. On the morning of, I reached out to the parent hosts to suss out the get-together details— they seemed pretty standard: including my child there would be four kids present; there would also be junk food, incessant texting, Netflix and possibly some giggling until the wee hours of the night. 

Later that evening, I dropped my child off at the sleepover and assumed I wouldn’t hear from her again until the following morning. What I didn’t expect was to get a phone call from her at 10:30pm to let me know that the group was going to be dropped (by one of the parent hosts) at a nearby restaurant/hang-out for a couple of hours. My kid wanted to know: Can she go?

I felt blindsided – by this out-of-the-blue phone call; by this sudden change in plans. But when you are raising teenagers, the blind-side is par for the course. There was no time on my end, to mull or ruminate. Although truth be told, no amount of mulling or ruminating would have changed my view on this one.

Can she go? Nope.

Full disclosure – at no time did I speak to any other parent so for all I know this could have been an elaborate hoax dreamed up by the nefarious teenage minds to get all parents on board. Whatever the case, I shut the proposed plans down. No – she could not go. And if everyone else was going – then I would gladly drive over there in my snowflake pjs and fuzzy socks and pick her up. Alternatively, they could all stay in to watch Netflix and eat Doritos like the original plan. In the end, because of my personal kibosh, no one went anywhere.

The fact that my exclusive parenting decision was possibly infringing on the other kids involved – was not lost on me. That’s what gave me pause and caused a bit of wavering after the fact. Was I being unfair to the other kids and to the other parents – free to raise their own kids however they see fit?

Here’s the first conclusion I’ve reached: there are always going to be parents who are more laissez-faire than me. There will be parents who condone underage drinking, who allow vaping, who don’t pay much mind to a group of 14-year-olds wandering around at 11pm. While they may not make my job as parent easier – that’s not their worry – nor should it be. Just as the things I happen to be lackadaisical about – staying up late, watching horror movies, swearing and allowing certain freedoms over others may bother the parents in my midst.

My second conclusion is concerning my own kids – they are always going to tell me how mean and unfair I am. They are inevitably going to point out and compare my decisions to that of their friends’ parents (but only when they don’t get their way – never the other way around). But this means they are watching and comparing and debating and rebelling. This means they are railing against what they view as an unjust parental regime – which is a normal and positive reaction and should be encouraged. Just not necessarily given in to.

How I raise my children; the guidelines I provide for them; the freedoms I allow them; the discipline I impart on them all have their best interest at their very heart. Other parents will make their own parenting decisions for the very same reasons (I hope). And just because my views won’t necessarily match up with other parents’ doesn’t change this fact – for either of us.

So what needs to be done is quite clear now. When I’m thinking about jumping off that bridge – I’ll take a deep breath and follow my gut reaction. Parenting, for me anyway, is a matter of instinct – and my initial reaction tends to be the right one. I have to trust this. I have to trust myself. If it’s to plug my nose and jump – then so be it. But if it’s to plant my feet and wave so long to the jumpers around me – then I’ll do that instead.

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