Mistakes

It is likely that all my planning for My Future Kids will go horribly awry. Which is to say, some day My Future Kids are going to drop the ball. There will come a day when one of My Future Kids will realize that they have made a terrible mistake. This cannot be avoided, and may even need to be encouraged, I don't really know. Anyway, when that day comes, My Future Kids may or may not be faced with a decision. They could learn from it and proceed to never acknowledge that it ever happened. This is acceptable to me, but I think that I will probably learn about it anyway, but maybe not. I suppose they could also not learn from it and not tell me, but then I guess they'll make the same mistake again until they do learn from it. The option, which, nosy Future Parent that I am, I would prefer, comma, is that they could fess up. As an engineer, it is then my prerogative to then attempt to make that to be clearly the best option.
Of course, as a Future Parent, I must punish mistakes. If I did parenting right, My Future Kids will understand the importance of this, but that doesn't mean that they'll like it or be willing to accept it. So the most apparent question is: how do I balance the meting of punishment with being someone that My Future Kids can talk to? But it's not just about punishment. I know that I do not fear punishment from my parents but that doesn't mean I'm going to talk to them about that stupid tattoo I got or about that time I got super drunk and woke up naked on top of the statue of liberty next to three Ukrainian models and my parole officer. It doesn't even really make sense, my mother got her eyebrows tattooed on when she was young, so it's not like she can say anything about getting stupid tattoos. Is telling your parents about the stupid shit you did just a matter of whether or not you talk to your parents about things? Do you have to be friends with your kids to get them to talk to you? Is it about how they perceive you? Do you need to be a human being to them rather than a parent?  Maybe it's just about how much they trust you. What does that even mean? Maybe it's about their perception of how you see them. Maybe I have to be the open one. I think that may be easiest. Then there's they question of how do you ask them enough about their lives in order to be in the know without asking so much that they become annoyed and purposefully evasive? That's the worst. It's what I do to my parents.
I think my current plan to have a defined system where if shit goes down and they tell me about it or need me to bail them out, they will not be punished and I will not be angry at them until the next day. However, if they do not tell me about it and I found out anyway, shit will certainly go down once more and I will pull no punches. Of course, if they don't tell me about it and I don't find out, then I guess they must have been able to handle themselves, and my intervention wouldn't have been necessary anyway. It's a bit of a gambling game. That's the beauty of these things, if I don't find out about it, it probably wasn't such a big deal anyway. That is, until it becomes not my business at all and they're old enough to get to decide what I hear. Then, they better tell me about every last goddamn stupid tattoo they get. Though frankly, I don't need the details every time they wake up naked in a different country, especially if that means their sex lives are better than mine.