The Parenting Conundrum

We were at our neighbor's house with another couple New Year's Day when someone mentioned that they had gotten "Superbad" for their 8th grader as a Christmas gift.



Our boys are in 6th grade, 4th grade, and pre-school. We tend to be tighter than most parents with most things. We don't have any premium cable channels, monitor their PG-13 movies, don't get them the newest bling and toys available. We live in an upper-middle class subdivision where toys and trophies run amuck for the most part.

I assume most people think they are great parents yet would tell everyone they are not perfect (unless they are admittedly inept). For us, we have a couple of questions that we are grappling more frequently with:

1. Is our role as parents to protect or equip our boys? What is the relationship between these two choices?
2. Should we micro-manage social interactions of our boys, particularly who they spend time with? This includes how to schedule free time as well as how to increase the social skills and choices of the less adept son and create more responsible choices for the more adept son.

I have a call, but I'll get back to both of these later this morning.