Making Hard Calls as a Parent

We have a rule in our house, when you get your license, you don’t drive your friends for the first year. You can drive your family around but that is all. And just as importantly, you don’t hop in a car with your friends who are new drivers on their red p plates.

I know It’s not a popular rule, I know most other parents don’t understand. 

Our kids accept the rule begrudgingly, but in the eyes of their friends I am sure It’s the kind of rule that makes us “old-fashioned” or “overprotective”. But that’s okay, Because sometimes, being a parent means making unpopular choices. 

We have had to make these decisions over the years, from saying no to social media until they were 16. No electronics in bedrooms, No sleepovers until they were 11. Some decisions other parents agree with, othertimes they look at us with that look, and that’s ok. 

Sometimes you have to make the hard decisions, to save your children from heart ache and pain.

I still remember the morning I arrived at school in Year 12. The air was heavy with something I couldn’t quite name, until I heard the news. A girl, not much older than me, had died in a car crash. There were other kids in that car too, kids I knew, kids I’d watched play basketball. That moment never left me. 

My husband as well had a similar story. 

When you’re young, you think you’re invincible. You think “that won’t happen to me.” But as a parent, you carry the stories that remind you it can. 

That’s why we make these decisions, not to take away freedom, but to protect it. 

It is not that I don’t trust them, I do trust them otherwise I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night every time they left the house keys in hand. 

I just don’t trust the roads, the distractions, or every other person on the road. 

These rules aren’t about control, they’re about keeping our kids safe long enough to have the life they’re so eager to live. 

Sometimes love is saying “no,” even when it’s unpopular, even when your heart wants to say “yes.”