Tag: Parental Warnings

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Parental Warnings, by Phillip Hoyle

A sunny day with warm air at the municipal park; picnic weather for sure. I was eating a sandwich when my dad said with some feeling, “Phillip, don’t move.”

“Why?” I asked nervously fearing a snake might be coiling ready to strike.

“It’s a bee. It’s landed on your shirt,” my dad said calmly. “I’ll get it.” And he did, swatting it away.

That experience was about as urgent as my parents’ warnings ever got for we lived a very calm life. I’m sure they asked me to watch when I crossed the street and the like, but there were no dire warnings that I remember. I just lived through my nineteen-fifties’ childhood in a kind of Eden. All seemed so stable.

Although my parents didn’t preach much at us kids, they did discipline. There were spankings. Surely these originated as hand slaps on tiny butts, but were administered through the clothing. I do recall mother’s house slipper once when three of us kids were getting to be too much. We had been fighting among ourselves. Perhaps the noise level had got too high, so the three of us were instructed to lean over the couch cushion, our hinies in the air. I whispered to my youngest sister not to cry. We both knew our other sister would cry to high heaven. We tittered to one another and in so doing we realized the slipper didn’t hurt all that much anyway. I suspect mom had to suppress her laughter as well. I don’t remember her ever spanking us again as if she realized the hopelessness of it all.

My dad was another matter. He was larger, stronger. Sometimes he used his belt. The only spanking from him I clearly remember was when I was just a little too old, maybe twelve. I had been acting up in front of his parents and may have embarrassed him. He was angry, took me to the next room, pulled off his belt, and let me have it. I deeply resented this spanking, the last one he ever gave me. I suspect he embarrassed himself by giving it. Perhaps his dad told him I was too old or he just figured it out himself. All the spankings were immediate responses to small infractions and rarely were attached to rants or sermons.

From my parents I received no dramatic warnings about the larger issues of life. I suppose they were watching us five kids and wanted us to avoid problems, but they may have been more concerned for the other four, my sisters. Being a boy, I got away with more with my parents, but of course not with my sisters. Perhaps the folks were just saving their breath. Although I don’t recall any overt warnings or sermons, I realize I got some anyway. Mostly these were realizations from what I experienced at home.

* Don‘t exasperate others with your behavior.

* Don’t embarrass people in power in front of their superiors.

* Don’t embarrass your children with your discipline.

One result was that I didn’t give warnings to my kids except those common ones to pay attention while driving, and so forth, the same ones my dad gave me when he was teaching me to drive.

Other teachings I got came from the established and predictable schedule of family life. For instance, take sheets off the bed each Monday morning and drop them over the banister onto mom’s head when we called her. Other responsibilities I was expected to perform included doing yard work, carrying out and burning the trash, cleaning up after meals, keeping an acceptable level of personal cleanliness, participating in family activities, and keeping up grades in school. It was as if not to do these things would somehow bode ill. Still, such warnings were never preached.

I credit my parents. For whatever reasons, they did well tolerating one another and five kids in a small house and later in a larger one. They gave independence to five rather independent-thinking offspring. They doled out simple immediate punishments in predictable and appropriate ways. Mostly they lived consistent lives and reared five children who also have found it easy to accept responsibility, to provide appropriate leadership, to like themselves and others, and to enjoy the many opportunities life proffers. And my parents did it all without leveling dire warnings and with a mainly calm style and loving attitude.

I sometimes got advice when I asked but it wasn’t preached. They gave me insight into problems and people. They gave me skills for dealing with life. They gave me the stability to live my own life. I remember when Dad drove me to the eye doctor to get my first prescription glasses, and I still wear the rosy-tinted pair my mother provided me.

© 1 April 2012

About the Author

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot

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Parental Warnings by Betsy

I’m sure my mother was thrilled when she saw that her second born was a girl. Her first was a boy and now this would round out the family perfectly.

However there was a down side for my mother to having a girl child. I think the warnings started about the time in life when a baby starts understanding verbal language. When is that? About age three months, I believe.

“Girls are vulnerable, boys are not.” This was my mother’s ever-present unspoken thought.

Growing up I never felt very vulnerable. Tomboys never do. Tomboys see themselves as strong and adventuresome, not puny and vulnerable. And why in the world was my brother always allowed to do adventuresome things that I never was allowed to do?

“You’re a girl and that’s life,” was the simple answer to that question.

She never actually said the words, but the next warnings came through loud and clear starting around my fifteenth or sixteenth year of life.

“It happens.” Or, “A girl can easily lose control.” Or, “A girl can easily be swept off her feet.” Or, “A little smooching can lead to more intimate contact and before you know it, it happens.” Or, A boy will take advantage if he is given the slightest chance.” Or, “Boys are driven more than girls.”

So the message “Until you are married do not get pregnant” or rather, “Until you are married don’t do anything that would get you pregnant,” came through loud and clear until–well, until my mother became too ill to worry about it any more.

My mother never knew that I was homosexual. She died before I myself acknowledged my sexual orientation. Little did she know that there was virtually no chance that I would lose control while smooching with a boy. After all, I was barely interested in any smooching at all. I wanted to go to the dances, be with friends, etc. But being alone with my boyfriend really did not appeal to me at all. This was something to be avoided.

Spending the night with my girl friend was what I wanted to do. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, my girl friends were not inclined as I was and so sexual activity was off limits, even the thought of it was taboo. I never allowed myself such thoughts.

I wonder what my mother’s warning would have been if she then knew what I know today. I can only imagine: “You will end up a lonely woman without a husband and a family. Even if you have a partner, you will never be fulfilled. Who will protect you? Who will take care of you?

It must have been hard enough for my mother to accept that her daughter was somewhat of a tomboy. But to her credit I never, ever got the message from her that I was not valued just as I was, or that I should be more feminine or different in any way from what I was. In the end that positive message was much stronger than her warnings. I was loved and valued just as I was.

© 5 July 2012

About the Author  


Betsy has been active in the GLBT community including PFLAG, the Denver women’s chorus, OLOC (Old Lesbians Organizing for Change). She has been retired from the Human Services field for about 15 years. Since her retirement, her major activities include tennis, camping, traveling, teaching skiing as a volunteer instructor with National Sports Center for the Disabled, and learning. Betsy came out as a lesbian after 25 years of marriage. She has a close relationship with her three children and enjoys spending time with her four grandchildren. Betsy says her greatest and most meaningful enjoyment comes from sharing her life with her partner of 25 years, Gillian Edwards.

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Nobody Warned Me about This by Nicholas

          Maybe it was because my parents assumed that their kids
would just know better, I don’t recall my youth being burdened with parental
warnings. There was none of the hectoring others have told me that they got from
their parents about do this or don’t do that. My sophisticated mom and dad relied
on that mystical bond between parent and child in which good and harm are
communicated without words or maybe with the slightest gesture or frown.
          Oh, there were the usual admonitions to drive carefully
when I went out. And once when I was about to head off to college, mom asked if
I knew about homosexuals in an attempted warning that I stopped short. It
wasn’t that I feared I was one and she was going to out me but rather that any
conversation about anything sexual at age 18 with my mother was just too creepy
to let happen.
          Once I sort of asked for a warning. I was testing out my
new independence living away from home at college. Ohio State,
like every college campus in the country in 1964, was rumbling with movements
of change and I as a freshman jumped right in. It was a battle over the rights
of students to hear the free speech of forbidden speakers, namely Marxist
political theorists. Talk was there would be a demonstration with the
likelihood of arrests the next day.
          I mentioned all this to mom and dad in my regular weekly
phone call to see what they would say. Like, no, don’t do it, you’ll ruin your
future. But no such warning came. Mom thought about it and said that I should
do whatever I thought was best. Now, how was I going to rebel with an attitude
like that? I felt almost encouraged to get arrested. Maybe it was a trick. But
mom didn’t play tricks; she pretty much said exactly what she was thinking.
          So much for warnings. How is it then, I wonder, that I
turned out to be, as we used to say back then, one of the people my parents warned
me about. Free thinking, authority questioning, not too impressed with money
for its own sake, experimenter with odd drugs and even odder spiritualities,
totally supportive of people who go to great lengths to shape their lives, and
even their bodies, their way, and, to top it off, queer. It isn’t that I set
out to break all the rules, just the big ones. Perhaps mom and
dad knew that I was destined to break or ignore just about every admonition
they would have given me so they just didn’t bother.
          I joined radical political organizations, didn’t often cut
my hair, refused to join the army when told to do so, picked a pretty useless
college major instead of a practical one, never got around exactly to having a
career (I’ve had a few here and there, actually), ran away to San Francisco
twice, went to all-night dance parties when I was 35, and ended up marrying a
man.
          And in the end, I can say that taking risks and ignoring
even well-meaning warnings almost always pays off. If nothing else, I learned
some things I would never do again. I have sown my wild oats and they have
grown up to nourish me well over the years. I think Edith Piaf sang a song about
that.
          And now, though I went against most parental warnings and
admonitions, spoken or unspoken, I can say that the parents I ignored and shocked
many times are now my role models. We stayed together and sort of grew up
together—me changing and them changing. They too did things their way and they
aged well, remaining active though never failing to take naps, and learning new
things while steadfastly keeping their old familiar ways so that I say, yes,
they are my role models now.
Nobody
warned me that I’d come around to saying that.

About the Author

Nicholas grew up in
Cleveland, then grew up in San Francisco, and is now growing up in Denver. He
retired from work with non-profits in 2009 and now bicycles, gardens, cooks,
does yoga, writes stories, and loves to go out for coffee.