Have you ever noticed how you do many of the same things to your children that your parents did to you? Things that you swore growing up that you would never subject your own children to? It is amazing how each generation feels persecuted by their parent’s and then turnaround and parent their own children in a very similar manner. I caught myself doing this a few weeks ago with my daughter. Now that the situation is over I think it is funny, but at the time I was quite frustrated.

My daughter was packing her clothes to go to a friend’s house for a slumber party. I was to drive her over to the friend’s house after school on a Friday and the friend’s mom was going to bring her back on Saturday evening. As we were getting ready to leave on Friday it was snowing very hard. The forecast was for several inches of snow and we already had several inches on the ground. I told my daughter to put on her winter boots. She told me no, because she was getting into the car that was parked in our attached garage and I was dropping her at her friend’s front door. She told me only nerds wore winter boots and she was not going to need them for shopping the next day because they would be inside the mall. This started an argument, because she had put winter boots on her Christmas list and I had taken her along shopping to pick them out. They cost more than I would ordinarily spend on winter boots, but because she wanted them for Christmas I bought them. Now she was refusing to wear them. I told her we were not leaving the house unless the winter boots were in the car with us. She stormed off to get them out of the closet. As we drove to the friend’s house she gave me the silent treatment, just like I used to give my mom.

The roads were very slippery and the snow was piling up very quickly. Her friend lives five miles from us and this is usually a ten minute drive across town, but the snow had everyone driving very slowly. We had gone about two miles when the friend’s mom called me on the cell phone. I was concentrating on my driving so I had my daughter talk to her. My daughter told her that she had them along, and that we would be there in a few minutes. When I asked her what the call was about she told me that her friend’s mom reminded her to bring along winter boots for the next day. We looked at each other and started laughing. As we pulled up to the house two of the other girls that were staying the night had just arrived. They had on slip on shoes like my daughter and were carrying their winter boots. We all just shook our heads and started our drive home. On my drive home I remember my mom making me wear winter boots and how I thought I would never do that to my child.