Life Lessons Learned in a Rodeo

The little red Rodeo is gone. Hooray!! We sold it a few weeks ago... just a couple of hours after putting a sign on it... signed, sealed, delivered, it's theirs! No sellers remorse here. I thought it was long overdue to get rid of it. It was already 10 years old when we bought it. Each of my three boys drove it. Matt drove it until he left for college in Hawaii. Jon drove it to work every day one summer with the air conditioning broken and never complained. It was getting pretty beat up by the time Josh got it. I asked him one day if he wanted a newer car and he said "No way, I love the Rodeo. Who cares if it's old! I'm happy to drive it!" Wow...

I realized then that my children are much wiser and more insightful than I am. Yes, my kids learned some great life lessons because of that Rodeo. They didn't care if most of their friends were given new cars when they turned 16. Their self-image wasn't tied to what kind of car they drove. They didn't have feelings of entitlement as so many of their generation do. (And I personally believe it is fueled by their parents giving them too much.) They learned how to take care of a car, to do the maintenance on it, and to work on the engine and all the other moving parts. With the help of a kind home teacher, they rebuilt and fixed the air conditioning system. And boy did they appreciate the flow of cold air on their faces after driving it for months without!!

And now Jon has bought his first truck. It's almost new and nothing fancy. A part of me just wanted to hand him the money and say "We'll pay for it... you deserve it!" But, no, we held back as we watched him work and struggle to pay for it with his hard earned money. His pride of ownership shows with the big smile on his face! He knows the value of a dollar. And the accomplished feeling of hard work. He says it was worth the wait!

It really is true that if you make your children's life a little harder, they will have a much better life! In a world of everything being so instant it is so hard to teach them to wait. And I find myself saying the same thing my parents said to me when I was a kid: "Wait until you grow up, then you'll appreciate it more." Child psychologists claim we need to teach our children this theory of delayed gratification for them to have happy and successful lives.

I agree... let them grow up and still have things to dream about...