Another Milestone!

During what we now grandly call my "starter marriage," we wore our then-teenage daughter completely out. She had come into the family with an already one-year-old brother, and two more foster brothers almost literally around the corner. As she matured we started giving her more and more opportunities to babysit until, finally, she was literally our on-call sitter. If Mom and Dad decided they needed to go somewhere, we just took it for granted that our daughter was ready to step in and watch the kids.

Flash forward about fifteen years, and we're finally in a position once again to have a teenager available to babysit for Mom and Dad for an occasional short date or shopping trip. Jelly stepped up to the plate this week for the first time so that Mrs. Woody and I could go to the movies and see "The Sorcerer's Apprentice." (Not bad. Completely predictable but nicely done. A few nods to the Fantasia version of the story here and there.)

Upon returning home we were delighted to note that a) the house had not burned to the ground, and b) the kids were still speaking to each other. This becomes treacherous ground as the older sibling takes on more responsibility and walks that strait path between being a helpful junior home exec on the one hand, and a tyrant-in-training on the other.

Back in the day, yours truly held no delusions about being a helpful anything where his siblings were concerned. I was a full-fledged tyrant until about the time baby sister appeared on the scene. She was the first one who would benefit from my new, more mellow approach to life. Whereas with my other siblings, and particularly my brother, I would simply handle any conflict with a balled-up fist, at least with the baby I was more likely to put it through some cheap paneling on the wall.

Jelly, on the other hand, has inherited more of her mother's genes than mine. At least where older-sibling issues are concerned she has, and that's a good thing. It means that, while they occasionally still get into it like a couple of sparring cats, for the most part they handle their own conflicts in a far more diplomatic way than I ever did at that age.

It's another one of those milestones that remind parents just how fast their kids grow up. I'd say it's not fair, but, heck, I've been waiting for this day for quite awhile now. About thirteen years, in fact. Cute as she was from the moment she was born, my fatherly instinct to have ready-to-order babysitters in the house kicked in at about the third diaper I changed. When Doodle came along, that instinct intensified. Now that moment has arrived, and I like it. I like the idea that we can leave our daughters alone for limited amounts of time while Mommy and Daddy have some adult time together. Alone.

There is, of course, the bittersweet angle as well. The girls are growing, as I've mentioned before, far too quickly. Our phone answering message still has a five-year-old Jelly's voice announcing, "We can't answer the phone right now. Please leave us a mes... sage." That hesitation in "mes... sage" is vintage Jelly, and it's far too cute to ever discard willingly. Now she's the secretary for her Beehive class and actually uses the phone more than her telecomm-challenged father. Likewise Doodle, who is nearly 11, is not truly in need of a babysitter at this point. She looks after herself just fine, and in another era would likely have been left alone by her parents as I frequently was at that age.

As a parent, however, I worry. Worry is part of the Master Plan, isn't it? I worry for my kids as my parents worried for me, and their parents worried for them. There's always something. It might be whispers and then shouts of war. It might be drugs and radical culture. It may be that predators abound that lure innocent children into worse-than-death experiences. Whatever the cause, the worry is essentially the same: how can I ever hope to keep my babies safe? What can I, as a parent, do that would ensure they live a long and prosperous life?

The answer is that we continue to do what we have been doing to prepare them for life. Keep praying. Keep talking. Keep understanding. Keep it up.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Jelly's working up a pretty good head of lather these days. Here's to many more repeats.

Parental Rights Amendment

Mrs. Woody sent me an item that's making the email rounds. It's a proposed constitutional amendment "relating to parental rights." It was introduced into the House on June 26, and contains the following intriguing language:

`Article --

`Section 1. The liberty of parents to direct the upbringing and education of their children is a fundamental right.

`Section 2. Neither the United States nor any State shall infringe upon this right without demonstrating that its governmental interest as applied to the person is of the highest order and not otherwise served.

`Section 3. No treaty may be adopted nor shall any source of international law be employed to supersede, modify, interpret, or apply to the rights guaranteed by this article.'.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra of Michigan introduced it, and Section 1 is spot-on. You'll not get any disagreement from any homeschooling parent that this has always been one of our most fundamental rights. Truth is, the very fact that we need to make this a constitutional amendment at all is a very telling indictment of just how ludicrous our interfering governments — federal and local — have become.

Section 2, however, bothers me. Rather than leave it where it was in Section 1, the lawyers just couldn't resist keeping that little loophole in there. So long as the feds or the states fail to demonstrate that their interests are of the "highest order," then no problem. But how on earth do they define "highest order?" I know how I define it, and I hardly think I'm on the same wavelength as a bunch of legal parasites in expensive clothing.

I can pretty much guarantee that, were this amendment to actually be ratified (and it has a loooooooong way to go before that happens) the Democrats of California would expend every effort to demonstrate exactly how the "problem" of homeschooling is an issue of the "highest order." You could probably measure how long it would take them to file the first court challenges with a stop-watch. I would prefer (silly me) to have that section redacted completely. Or, failing that, some language that speaks to only allowing the government to intervene where clear and demonstrable danger to the children exists. Even this language would be frought with potential misinterpretation, so a much smarter person than I am would have to craft that section.

It really is a nice gesture, but I won't be holding my breath. It's only just been introduced. It has to fight its way through both a Pelosi House and a Reid Senate before it can even be sent to the various states for consideration. If history is any teacher, this thing will die in committee long before it makes it to our state legislatures.