Mother, May I?

There are times in life when your adult children question the way you raised them. Times when you find yourself having to explain the choices you made and the stands you took. Such a time (one of many) came for me last week and I thought I would share it with you. These times are never easy, but perhaps they can be a learning experience for all of us. Following is a text conversation between Stephanie and me this past Friday evening. It started out of the blue like this:

Stephanie:  I blame this on you.

Me:  You blame his scaring away axe murderers on me?

Stephanie:  No, I blame the fear on you.

Me:  I never told you axe murderers were trying to break in.

Stephanie:  I just saw it and it made me think of you. Because you're the one who told me weird stories all of my life ... and I guess dad too because he used to teach us scenarios of what to do if someone broke in the house while y'all were gone.

Me:  So we wanted y'all to be prepared. I think that makes us good parents. Have you been killed by an axe murderer? No? Then I guess we were successful.

Stephanie:  Lol

Me:  (A short time later because I felt like I should retaliate for her accusations) okay, I was looking up clown memes to send you, but I'm home alone and I ended up scaring myself.

Stephanie:  Hahaha

Stephanie:  (Half an hour later): This is something you would have said to us:

Me:  I only would have said that so that you would know there's no such thing as monsters.

Who would have guessed kids could grow up to be so sensitive and hold your sarcasm against you? So if you have adult children, what decisions/comments have you had to defend? If you're kids are still small, what's something you've said or done recently that you know you'll have to explain someday?