The Grown-Up Talk

Some things in life, we do regularly and repeatedly. Get out of bed. Get dressed. Go to work. Clean the house. Do the laundry.

For parents, that list includes “Have conversations with our children. The same conversation. Over and over and over.”

Lately, I have been repeatedly having what I call “the grown-up conversation” with my younger daughter. It goes like this:

Me: “Who tells me to get up in the morning?”

Daughter: “You do.”

Me: “Who tells me to shower and get dressed?”

Daughter: “You do.”

Me: “Who tells me to do my job?”

Daughter: “You do.”

Me: “Kiddo. This is what adulthood is. Childhood is somebody else telling you what to do. Adulthood is taking over that job for yourself – telling yourself to get out of bed, take a bath, get dressed, eat something, go to school or go to work and get your work done. That’s a big part of what it takes to be a grown-up.”

I foresee having this conversation many, many more times before it sinks in and takes root. I foresee it every time I have to drag the child from bed in the morning and compel her to get dressed and go to school.

My older daughter is off to college now. She’s pretty good at the grown-up self-management thing. Homeschooling seems to have given her a leg up on the practice; she had to manage her own schedule through high school to a degree that her traditionally-schooled friends did not. So now she finds herself passing along the grown-up talk to her college friends, who are for the first time having to tell themselves to quit and go to bed; to get up and go to class without the motivation of attendance offices and tardy bells; to eat regular, healthy meals; to budget much larger blocks of unscheduled time than they have had to work with in the past.

I wish I could say that I have reached a point where I, personally, no longer need the grown-up talk. Alas, there are still times when I have to talk myself sternly through a full day’s worth of adulting.

So, maybe the grown-up talk is one of those things we all need on a repeated and regular basis.

I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me now; I need to get back to the laundry.