HOW do we deal with issues of discipline and keeping our children in check while being their confidantes in their troubled teenage years?
How do we handle puberty, help them manoeuvre through the stage through which they must go - well, at least as most do - where the world seems to turn against them and their parents with it; when all they need is people to understand them, be their ear and friend and a shoulder to cry on during those emotional times when everything seems to go south?
That is the question top of my mind at the moment, as I steer my 13-year-old into the rough and tumble of her teens and as her younger brother watches with a keen eye; and as I become more aware that she is her own person, with thoughts and feelings separate from mine, and where I have to accept that she also realises that I am not the be-all and end-all she grew up around, to and from whom all wisdom comes.
The advice that floods social media, books and talks is to keep a tight hold on the rein, keep it steady and firm, but not so that it throttles the person they can and want to become, because that can lead to horrible consequences.
The stories I have heard include children resenting parents, becoming delinquents, rebelling as they find ways out of the stronghold, and therefore their forcefully opening a gap which, I have heard, can never ever be closed.
To my mind, keeping children disciplined is key. In my home, growing up, the reminder that we were children and my parents were, well, parents, was the foundation on which we were raised. At no point did my mother attempt to be friends with us, no sir.
But at all times she was the go-to person when we had stuff to talk about, and had sage advice when the schoolground and classroom became challenging, when the girls were mean or friendly, and when those we played with on the street developed attitude, negative or positive.
She soothed and calmed and encouraged, much in the same way she had when we fell and grazed knees or stubbed toes as small kids - she always held the elixir to treat, did my mother.
But she was never ever open to talk about boyfriends and girlfriends, about crushes and, God forbid, issues of sexuality.
Those were not to be entertained in my mother’s house. At least not until we were young adults, a stage we somehow reached in our second year of university and not one year before.
The issue of discipline, as we were taught by the parents and grandparents, was not meant to punish. It was a strategy to enforce respect and was positive, was built on talking and listening, guiding, and for us, knowing what behaviour was appropriate, whether at home, at relatives’ and friends’ houses, at school and everywhere else we were, with or without them.
And I must say it was good for us - it allowed us the freedom to have and keep secrets, but only in so far as they would not disrupt life, and emerge as topics of discussion and the so-called breaking of rules.
But these days that reality seems to fade. I hear parents say children expect more from me as their mother - they want, as early as possible, to be able to tell us, and me in the case of my budding teen, if she thinks the boy who wants to be her boyfriend is good enough, or if she can approach a guy and tell him she likes him.
This, other mothers say, means I have my finger on the pulse, I know who when and where - important aspects of any mother’s life. I’m just not sure I’m up to it, at least not yet.
But we will see, as society maps the way for me, and as she grows up and away from me bit by bit every day.