Sandra Dodd

-=-I think i am going to the other extreme with my purse. My mother' was
totally forbidden to even touch.My husband will not let me touch his
wallet. I wanted to be open with Lukas about it but seems to be not
such a good idea,right?-=-

I have few thoughts.

Even if everybody on this list unanimously said "good idea" or "bad
idea," that wouldn't make it so. Needing other people's approval
isn't good.

If I think he shouldn't be digging through your purse, WHY do I think
that? Maybe that's what you could be thinking. Why did your mom not
want people in hers? Why does your husband not want you in his?
Maybe his mom used to get into it. Maybe they're going along with
the tradition of having one little private place. It IS a tradition,
that wallets aren't dug through. If you go to prison, they go
through your wallet. If you're in a car wreck, someone will look at
the ID, but they won't go through every movie stub and family photo.

To live in reaction to one's mom's rules is still letting the mom
control the situation. It's still being a child.

To want to allow one's child to not only get into one's purse but
pull things out (the money out!) in front of one's mom, at the mom's
house, seems to me to be (potentially) a passive aggressive show of
defiance and rejection. You probably didn't mean to use your son to
get back at your mom, but just from the account of it, it seems like
a slight-to-probable possibility.

Meanwhile, what is your son learning? Will he think it's just cool
to go into anyone else's purse? Because I can tell you for sure,
it's not.

I don't look in my sons' wallets. I don't look in Holly's purse.
Sometimes they've told me something was in there and I could get it
(a key, or my own debit card or something) and so I know they're very
organized, like their dad, and that's cool to see, but it's a place
I'm very occasionally privileged to go, not something that's my right
(socially; whether legally or not, I don't care).

http://sandradodd.com/balance

A quote from that: "My favorite "new rule" has always been that
learning comes first."

When deciding what to advise your son to do, or how to explain things
to him, it IS extreme ("I think i am going to the other extreme") to
choose to do the opposite of what your mom did.

We had rules at the table when I was a kid. I didn't adopt all of
them, but I considered each one, as my kids got older, and picked up
a few other ideas as Keith and I mingled our own families' traditions
and our own quirks. My dad never walked around without a shirt on.
Keith has sat down at the table without a shirt. Not cool, said I.
Please put a shirt on. He doesn't like for someone to read at the
table, so I don't read if he's there. If I'm sitting all by myself,
I do.

My mom said "No singing at the table," and she was serious. We might
choke. She didn't want us goofing around. My kids aren't told not
to sing, but they chew with their mouths closed, and they have some
more-formal and less-formal table knowledge, which is useful for when
they go to fancy restaurants. They don't embarrass themselves at
other people's houses (or not much, I hope).

Mindfulness and real thought require more than deciding to do as our
parents did or to do the opposite. Neither of those is balance and
choice.

Sandra