Riding in cars

Its no great secret that I have a bunch of kids nor is the fact that I have basically raised them by myself. I won't reach to hard to pat myself on the back because it has taken a whole lot to do what I have done, friends and family have played integral roles in my kids lives and allowed them to have the best of all worlds.

When I was nineteen, pregnant and alone my mother insisted that I couldn't accomplish anything with a baby on my hip; a year later she was horrified when I became pregnant again; devasted wasn't even about to cover it the third year in a row of pregnancy. I managed though and got some serious birth control that seemed to actually work, that is for about 4 years before it too failed and I once again found myself pregnant. After that I just had my tubes tied and was done.

I know it probably seems weird mentioning all of this with the title of the blog but for me, it was the safest place in the world to talk about such important things with my mother. We were never really that close and she always seemed to view me as quite a failure in life, I assume its because her and I are so different.

Anyway, as my kids grew conversations; important ones anyway; seemed to always happen in the car. I knew from my past that I liked not having to be stared down when discussing sensitive subjects such as a failing grade, sex, feelings, emotions and dreams. Somewhere in my psyche I just felt better about it not being so confrontational and made it a habit with my own kids.

The first big one occured when my son was around 13 years old, I thought it was time to discuss sex with him. Imagine my surprise when he let it slip that "every time I have had sex I have used a condom mom" I was shocked to say the least.

Since then we have talked about everything under the sun including underwear issues, sex, friends, grades, school, news, the war, work, love, death and of course the occasional fart. This may sound foolish but it works!

I remember commercials a few years ago that suggested trying to have conversations with teens while in the car and those commercials always made me smile because I was already doing it. I think the reason they work is because time is limited between stops, you can't stare down your teen and this leads to a higher comfort level for them. Now when my kids want to talk they ask me to take them to the store for something trivial, the trip is about 15 minutes one way.

If all the worlds problems could be solved by taking a 15 minute ride to the store, imagine how the world would be....