Limited Freedom

I decided to write this from the yesterday incident which I learnt something about parenting 101 from my lifetime mentor and partner, my husband.

Yesterday, when I picked my first son up from school, he was so excited to tell me about his exam results. As I have prayed that whatever results he received, I would gratefully accept it because he has done the best during the preparation, and we, as parents have done our best to prepare him so when he told me his results, I praised him.

Reaching home, suddenly he told me that he would be going to nearby mall meeting his friends for pokemon games. I was astounded and reacting in impulse, I said to him No, because we already had a plan, his younger brother had music lesson and papa needed to use the car for church ministry.
He started crying then he told me that he will call papa.

Before he called his dad, I texted my husband to explain the situation and he actually did call his dad.
I went inside the room to put the youngest son to sleep so I didn't know how's the conversation going. When I went out, I saw text messages that my husband allowed him to go there with two rules.
- he can't play pokemon games because he didn't have enough points
- he needed to stay there until 8pm when my husband will pick him up, even if his friends didn't show up

I still didn't feel good about let him wandering by himself at mall, so I persuaded him by dining at his favourite japanese restaurant later or playing pokemon at the place that we will go later, but it's not successful. He had already made his mind to meet his friends there.

So before picking my husband up, I dropped him off at that mall and reminded him again about two rules and told him, if he broke the rules, we won't let him go again next time.

Then just before 8pm, he called my husband to pick him up at 8.30pm instead because he wanted to have dinner first, but since my husband hasn't had dinner yet after his church ministry, he decided to join our son and they did some talking.
My husband probed him about who were his friends, whether his friends were really coming etc.

And it proved that I was wrong, there were 3 of them playing pokemon games. What relieved me was he kept his promises on those two rules. It turned out that his other 2 friends were from chinese class. And when I asked him about their chinese test scores, he said that they were fail.
I was stunned and my motherly thought was oh no, did he befriend with the wrong group of friends ?

My husband quickly calmed me down and told me that those kids may not make it in academic, but they were fun people and who knows they may be successful people in the future. What important is we put the right value in our sons regardless whom he befriends with. He needs to have his own principles and knows what is wrong and right.

As I listened to my husband, I was pondering too and realised my mistakes.
I was quickly to judge others based on the appearance and without realising it, I planted the wrong value to our children. When we judge the children as good and bad, smart and not smart, we subconsciously labelled them which in fact they were innocent.

I don't want my children to grow up with judgemental values. What my husband said is true, our job is to protect our children by not limiting his circle of friends but by putting the right value since young.
Soon or later, we couldn't control them especially in this social media era, we thought we know them but actually we don't.

As long as we have open communication with them, they are honest with us, and in respond, we accept them as they are, their mistakes and learn to grow together with them, we are on the right track.