You've got mail.

Last week I received an email entitled "Woohoo I've got an iPad". It was from my 77 year old mother :) It made me laugh because I knew she had serious iPad envy after playing with mine and her friend's. She had mentioned she would like to get one but first she had a couple of things to be getting on with - like a trip to China, England, France, Switzerland, Belgium and back to China and the rather inconvenient surgery for her cataract!

My Mum is pretty cool. She's not letting things slow her down. Rob dotes on her and the kids adore her and I admire her style! With the help of my father, she gave me and my siblings what others describe as a utopian childhood. We were well loved, well fed and well clothed. Sure there were things that I would've  liked them to have done differently but what child doesn't say that about their parents' methods?

Thinking back now things were pretty tough for my Mum, Dad had no idea about money so, she took sole responsibility for running the finances for a family of eight on a single income - creative accounting was often necessary! Two stand-out memories are: trying on a pair of skin-tight acid wash jeans that were ludicrously expensive and my mother announcing that they looked fantastic and I must have them; the other, in sharp contrast, is her saying how she longed for the day that when a bill arrived she could just pay it without having to wait for pay day.

My memories are not of fights and angry silences, they're of robust discussions and laughter and of a woman balancing my needs and desires (and that of my siblings) and doing it well. Mind you I have never understood why I would 'thank her later' for not allowing me to hang out at the Hume Cafe with my friends after school... my sisters still don't get that piece of parenting logic either.

My comfortable and cosseted childhood meant that I grew up expecting to offer my children the same thing. My life is very different to Mum's, I've always worked outside the home and that has meant my children have had different experiences. My parenting style is somewhat the same but also very different. But I think Rob and I have been mostly successful in building a modern utopia for our kids, they appear to be happy and well balanced. They were telling me, only yesterday, that they'd had to fill out a survey for RU OK Day and that neither of them had known what to put for the question about problems at home because they didn't have any. That made me smile.

So, why the reflection? I've recently been exposed to a woman who spends far too much time interfering in her daughter's life - she stalks her on facebook and then challenges her daughter about the posts, refuses to let her to go to sleep overs and has considered forcing her daughter to study German when she would prefer to choose dance. The girl is 14, Year 9 is but a moment in a whole life of experiences and surely if now isn't the time for dancing then when is? A little piece of my heart breaks for that child whenever I hear of her mother's latest antic. Helicopter parenting damages both parent and child.

Love your children the best way you know how, don't be afraid to say no but don't make it your default response. Say yes, it feels good and it's often the right answer. Let your kids take risks, be there to pick up the pieces. Don't feel you have to parent in the same way your parents did (good, bad or indifferent), chart your own course and create the life that suits you and your family.

When my kids ask if they can hang out with their friends at the various and malls and shopping centres, I say yes, even though my immediate reaction is a big loud NO, I figure that until they do something disgraceful or dangerous I have no basis for objection (the echo of my mother's voice in my head is not reason enough). Rob disagrees but because he never wants to hear the lament of the Hume Cafe again, he lets me have my way and I love him for that!

I know that I'm lucky to have happy, well adjusted, malleable kids but I'm also lucky to have a mum that, to this day, is someone I enjoy hanging out with. Even if she claims she has no idea why she refused to let me go to the Hume Cafe...

So, here's a LO celebrating my life and my kids (and Sparky) too. A photo taken by Rob on my Birthday. The LO is for Leah's wp word challenge - cuddles!

Thanks for stopping by, have a great weekend.