Guest post of the week by Deangelo Spencer
My daughter is a really good kid, and a great student. She’s 16 years old now, and I can’t believe how the time has flied. I’ve always been really strict with my daughter and made sure she does everything right. My husband and I have really sheltered her, and kept her safe from the outside world. We know she is getting older now and that we need to give her some more freedom, but we are so scared to do it! We are also terrified that if we keep her too sheltered, she’ll go off to college in two years and go crazy.
That is definitely not what we want to happen. We’d rather her get her feet wet with a little freedom under our roof and see how she takes it. We have given her a later curfew the last few weekends and think she is doing a really good job. We also got Doyle Clear Internet at the house, and have taken off all parental controls. She has been responsible so far, so hopefully we did a good job and she won’t go off the deep end.
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It’s so hard to find a balance between protecting and letting go — that’s been one of the hardest parts of parenting for me, especially with my daughter. She just turned 9 and the teenage years loom! It sounds like you are doing a great job with your daughter and she’s growing up into a lovely young woman!