Bridge

Last year Middle Child was mortified when Mom & Dad said, "No," to Twilight and its accompanying sequels feeling it was a probably a bit much for our sheltered sweetie. Kate, in turn, opted to express her separation from Mom & Dad on this issue by taking her purse to bed with her at night. Because the book was in her purse. And her parents would surely never notice the addition of a handbag to the girlie's pajama ensemble. Right. She was grounded for what boiled down to disobedience and acting like her parents were idiots. I started rethinking our handling of the initial desire to simply do what her friends were doing. While I'm still entirely not in favor of jumping off a bridge just because everyone else is doing it, our kid wanted to read a book not take a flying leap.
Recently, Middle Child attended a slumber party where all the girls knew a song by the Black Eyed Peas. All except for her. She came home and informed us that she wanted to listen to the radio station that the song had played on, and then assumed her best defiant stance. Except that the response she received was, "Okay. You can listen to whichever station you want. You usually make good decisions, and we trust you to determine whether or not something is good for you to be listening to on the radio." Because she does. And we are learning to actually act like we trust her to continue to do so.