A Frightening (Non-Political) Reality about This Year’s Election

Time is ticking.  As the days until the election trickle down, I had a very disturbing realization.  This may well be my last chance to influence my eleven year old child regarding how to evaluate and consider a candidate before an election.  How can that be?  Is she moving to the other-side of the world away from us?  No, but she will have moved to the other-side of the universe by the next election.  She will be... a TEENAGER! (Insert "GASP" here.)  The window of being the most influential person in her life will be closed and barricaded.

This is a frightening reality!  

As parents, we have relished being our child's main source of information.  All learning began with us. Once we began homeschooling, it returned to us and for the time-being, will remain with us.  As parents, it is our job to instill values, morals and responsibility in our children.  We also instill knowledge and hopefully someday, some wisdom too.  When there is a question to which we don't know the answer, we as a family, find it.  [I can't imagine life before the internet!  How did one ever answer all the questions without it?  "Why can't great white sharks live in captivity?"  etc.  But I digress...]

Right now, having a tween daughter, our family is on the verge of enduring all things teenager.  But by the time of the next election, we will have moved into full scale TEENAGE GIRL REALITY.  Having been one myself, this makes me shudder!  All you women and brothers who have sisters know why too!  My poor husband who only has a brother does not know just what this will mean.  He doesn't know just how crazy and dramatic things will become...  Sometimes ignorance is sweet bliss! 

The giggly gaggle of girls isn’t so bad.  It is the inability to actually listen to what anyone other than a girlfriend says... well that’s another story entirely.

So, I had better not waste any more precious moments.  They are going to be few and far between over the next few years.  Very shortly, Mother/Daughter bonding will virtually always involve eye-rolling, exasperation on her part and some charitable condescension for her to actually spend time with her mother.  

I had better get cracking on teaching her a few more life lessons while she can still listen, and not just merely here the audible sounds of my talking like Charlie Brown’s mother.  I think I will start with another lesson on how to evaluate the different available media sources for their accuracy, agendas and/or bias.