As it Turns Out...

Summer vacation is upon us.
Which means that our children no longer get on that big, yellow school bus each day at 8:22 am and depart from us for most of the day.  Which means that Michele and I have much more time to be in direct contact with the rather peculiar little people that cohabit our home.  We are finding that, while our children each have half of our genetic material, they are persistently and often irritatingly different from us.  So much so that we sometimes run into almost intractable arguments where we are operating on the assumption that they would like pretty much the same things that we would like.  In the course of pursuing the ethic of treating others as we would like to be treated we appear to be horribly cruel tormentors to our children.
Case in point: Michele registered Caitlyn for a one week Girl Scout day camp, which Caitlyn is fully enthusiastic about, because she is fully enthusiastic about almost anything that strikes her fancy and involves friends and games.  Michele has a deep rooted desire for fairness and equality, which manifests itself in many ways, but particularly when she is dealing with our children.  So in the interest of fairness and equality she is trying to find a program for Jack to attend, you know, so he won't feel left out.  Except Jackson does not feel left out of the summer day camp equation, in fact, I suspect that summer day camp probably appeals to him about as much as brussel sprouts.  I base this conclusion on the fact that he is my son, and while we are different in many respects, I am observing a certain tendency towards constructing a rigid boundary between public and private time in my son.  I understand it, because I had it when I was nine and I still have it at nearly 39.  I can book my schedule chock full of stuff, but I always have my eye on some down time, because I need it.
This means that I often resist adding "one more thing" to my schedule, and if I have crossed a threshold, for instance the end of school and the beginning of summer vacation, I will react rather violently to someone trying to sign me up for something else before I have had the aforementioned down time.  I strongly suspect Jackson has the same tendency.
Thus, about noon today, I get one of those "you need to have a talk with YOUR son" phone calls, because Jack was not at all cooperating with his summer camp coordinator (aka his mother).  But I'm sympathetic to his plight, because the last thing I would want intruding into my two month stretch of blissful downtime is another school-like activity, even if it "might" be fun.  While the activity "might" be fun, I am sure that whatever I find for myself to do WILL be fun.  So, I'm not inclined to twist his arm into going to day camp.
However, Jack differs from me in that he has rather less fear of negative consequences than I did at his age, and he can be rather belligerent at times.  In the last marking period, he decided not to do homework for math class because it cut into his downtime.  I was compulsive about doing homework, not because I loved school or learning, but because I didn't want to get in trouble.  So now I do need to have a talk with MY son, but I'm not sure how to get through to him on that end of things.  Even though I understand the underlying issues of what motivates him not to do things, I'm not quite sure how to motivate him TO do things.
What this all boils down to is the peculiar task of being a parent.  How do you raise little people who, while they might bear some passing resemblance to you in body, mind and spirit, have rather definite and sometimes infuriating personalities of their own?  How do you try to indoctrinate them into the mores of our society without crushing their creativity and beauty?  How do you get them to do what you think is best for them without simply being a bully?
It's hard work, and it takes some real thought, and most of us get absolutely no training in how to do it.  Yet somehow our species has managed to muddle through for a rather long time...
I suppose we'll make it through this summer too.