When Do I Let Go?Or: Why Can't I Spend All My Money On Twizzlers?

In my house there is a battered wicker basket on the top of the fridge that holds my secret stash of treats. My kids, they’ll mow through a Halloween’s worth of candy should a Halloween’s worth of candy be presented to them in a single night. Ask me how I know this. I, on the other hand, might spent months picking away at a package of licorice, a pint of ice-cream, a bag of taffy. Is this healthy? Probably, for my physical body. For my spirit? Who can say. Peel back the curtain and my miserly consumption of sugar is probably rooted in a satisfaction in being able to finally control something in a life that sometimes feels just a bad weekend away from running away on me. And my kids? Hell, they’re having a riot of a time on Halloween night.

As is so often the case, my kids have identified one parent as the fun one (Mom) and one parent as the not-so-fun one (me). Probably 99% of the time these delineations break down basically by which of the parents spends more time with the kids. Me, being with them throughout the day, is well-versed in the pitfalls of candy-frothed manic binges while my wife just wants to have a good time with her sons who she hasn’t seen all day. I don’t like being the “no” dude, but on the other hand, I worry about their enamel.

And this isn’t just food. It umbrellas all kinds of things in our life. When they should go to bed (ASAP), how long they need to wash their hands (a song sung at a normal, human pace, please), if they need to apply more sunscreen (YES!). The reason this issue of control exists in the first place is because we as parents have, for a brief few years, total (or the illusion of it) authority over the lives of our kids. And everyone is different! Sure, I may think it’s wildly self-destructive to their daily routines that my neighbors allow their kids to stay up late watching YouTube the night before, but there’s nothing I can (or want) to do about it. They have the freedom to try it, and maybe it works for them, who can tell? A lot of the time it does! All kinds of parenting leads to all kinds of kids lead to all kinds of people. It’s the wildest thing!

Parenting is like if we were all not-so-talented amateur scientists given our own labs with our own materials and were told: hey, make rocket fuel. You have some vague ideas of what you’d like to do, and you have examples from your life you’d like to emulate, and others you want to stay away from, but nobody is there, holding your hand the entire way or giving you a sheet of directions that will absolutely work. And the truly mind-blowing thing is that most of the time, we all make rocket fuel! We raise human adults. Basically-functioning, reasonably adjusted people who will maybe even go on to found their own little labs where they will be given their own materials and just try and wing it.

But what I want to know now is, when do I let go?

My sons are at an age where they are big enough physically (should they team up) to take me down, whether I like it or not. They are mature enough mentally to reason with me, tease me, plot against me, and doubt themselves. They have moved beyond being little perpetual motion machines set out to taste and touch everything and are now able to link up complex results to distant actions. Not always, but enough that it makes me wonder what my role is.

Sometimes my kids will ask me if they can watch a show on Netflix, or whatever. I’ll say something like, “just one,” and they’ll begin their negotiations, their wheedling and begging and I’ll give in or I won’t. They’re 8 and 9. But lately, I’ve been finding myself imagining giving this answer to a 11 and 12-year-old. Or a 15 and 16 year-old. It makes me cringe. At some point, the mandate of my control begins to crumble. The jet fuel is set and ready to burn, propelling them off on their own trajectories. If it’s clear to me now that imposing arbitrary limits on my kids because I have a rigid idea of what’s best for them when they’re teenagers is ridiculous, will I know it is ridiculous when I arrive there? What if they are already at a point where I need to start letting go and allowing them to explore their own limits and test what feels best for them?

We give our kids $20 a month for spending money. I think it’s really funny to call it walking around money, but nobody else does, so spending money is how we refer to it. When they first became aware of this windfall, around the age of 4 or so, they wanted to use it exclusively to buy candy. We’d be in Fred Meyer’s and they’d see a pack of Twizzlers big enough to feed the block and it would be $3.99 and they’d be like, “can I?” Then I’d imagine them mechanically slurping down shimmery licorice stick after licorice stick until they began vibrating and eventually exploding. So I made a limit. I said they could spend their money on anything except candy. And they did. Mostly on Bey Blades and Pokemon cards.

But about a month ago, my oldest came up to me, hip checked me into a display of Doritos and said “Yo, Dad, can I get me some of these Twinkies?” (Not factually true, but the vibe is 100% authentic) and I told him no, reminding him that we don’t use spending money on treats. And I felt so… ridiculous. He was a big kid now, and I was policing his own money. How was he going to learn anything?

So we’ve changed our policies. They can now use their money on anything. And sometimes it’s disgusting. (There was one hilarious scene where my oldest son spent $15 in one go at a little league concession stand where all the candy was criminally underpriced and the parent volunteer was losing her hair in real time as he asked for yet another box of Junior Mints to be put on his bill). But I guess it feels right?

We all have to let them off to get into their own little labs sooner or later. Maybe by letting them play with some of the test tubes earlier than we hav

e to will give them something of a head start when they’re truly on their own.

But hey, what do I know? There’s a billion ways to make rocket fuel.