My 10 year-old son has already been nagging me for several weeks about going to see Batman Dark Knight. I'm hearing the age old complaint "But Mom, everyone is going to be seeing it but me!" I'll admit, sometimes it's hard not to be swayed. He has learning disabilities and doesn't have many friends so I'm always trying to help him fit in. But I keep remembering my mother's words in the back of my head - "Someday they'll respect you and even thank you for setting boundaries." I know I'm going to be the mean mom for a while but I need to do what I feel is right and pass on this movie. I realize that these pressures are just going to increase as my children enter their teen years and I'm definitely dreading it.
It seems that we are a generation of parents who want to be friends first and parents second. I recently did a TV segment in which I got a standing ovation from the anchors when I suggested we not only need to set more boundaries for our children but not bow to the pressure to allow our children to do things just because "everyone else is."
How do you deal with these situations? Do you feel that we are a society that's forgetting how to be parents first?
