Do I hear my parents talking through me?

Alanna Wolf

“When I have kids, I’m never going to be like them.”

I can’t even count how many times my angst-filled teenage self thought that about my parents.

Normally when I was being righteously punished for doing something incredibly stupid.

But it didn’t matter, all my 16-year-old self knew was that my parents were lame and I would never, ever, be like that with my children.

Well, surprise!

Ten years later and I am so much like both of my parents that it’s a little bit frightening.

I remember the moment it happened too.

I was in Hy-Vee with my daughter and a full cart of groceries when she started pitching a hissy fit in the middle of the aisle because I wouldn’t buy Oreos.

I knelt down to eye level and said, “Young lady, you better get your act together right this minute or I will be leaving this cart of groceries right here, we will be going our to the car, and we will be having a conversation about your behavior once we get out there.”

Then we both looked at each other, eyes wide.

Her, because no child wants to have the “behavior” conversation out in the car with mom.

Me, because I had just opened my mouth and my mother’s voice had come out.

That’s not the only time it’s happened.

I’ve channeled my dad too.

A few months ago, I was driving home from Kansas City with my mom, in rush hour traffic.

After a tense 45 minutes of battling drivers from Iowa, I was nearly run off the road by a fellow driver.

That was when I let loose on a lengthy, and rather impressive, road-rage-inspired rant, which I won’t print here because my grandmother reads this newspaper.

When I was done, my mom turned to me and whispered, “You sounded just like your dad.”

So, my greatest teenage fear has come true, and honestly, I’m okay with it.

Of course, there are things that are done differently in my household. I think I’m the laid back, rock-and-roll counterpart to my more conservative parents.

And that doesn’t mean that I’m parenting wrong, and my parents did it right, or vice versa.

The world I’m raising my daughter in is different from the world I grew up in. But the important things my parents taught me are still important today.

My parents taught me personal responsibility, independence, honesty, and manners.

They taught me that a good attitude and a willingness to work hard will take a person places, and that anything worth having is worth working for.

And hopefully,, that’s what I am teaching my daughter.

As I creep toward 30, being like my parents doesn’t scare me as much as it did.

If anything, I hope I do half as well parenting my daughter as they did parenting my brother and me.

So thanks, Mom and Dad. You were the best teachers I could have asked for in preparation for the most important job I’ll ever have.