Mildred's Parenting Style

Mildred's, or Mom's parenting style was a good mixture of lots of love (innumerable hugs, expressions of "MMM, I love you," and little kisses whenever I was around the house), firm structure and discipline (unable to recall a spanking), and calm even-handed treatment of disagreements. From the 3rd grade to 6th grade, Mom's main coercive tool was the threat of a return to military school. However, during a particularly strong argument (we never shouted and I can ONLY recall one instance of my mother using profanity) she made that threat and I simply called her bluff by saying, "Mom, you are not going to put me back in military school because we can not afford the cost and I'm too old to be forced to do it, so please stop saying that!" She was stunned, fell silent for a moment and then started to cry softly, which Mom rarely did. I went over, sat down by her, gave her a hug around the shoulders, kissed her on the forehead and told her that I loved her. I have no recall what the argument was about.... From that point on, we dealt with each other as equals who loved and respected each other, we tried to resolve conflicts (my failure to do an agreed chore, her broken promise to do something, etc.) in a calm, rational manner and I credit much of my approach to conflict resolution to her upbringing. My mother taught me as much by her amazing example as by words--she NEVER brought any man/boyfriend/date into our home, she never raised her voice at me, even when she was very upset with me, she never made one bigoted statement, she was ALWAYS reading in her spare time, she was ALWAYS talking about me going to college AND she married an African-American as her second husband, which spoke volumes to me about her views on race. Due to her upbringing I had no problem with it and my best friend in the 6th grade was Christopher Columbus Jackson, an African-

American. On the other hand, Mom never made an effort to see one of my football games in high school or one of my wrestling matches over 4 years! She was NOT there for the California State Wrestling Championship. The first and only time she saw me compete was as a BYU sophomore when we wrestled against UCLA (we thumped them!) in LA. Finally, while she was resistant at first about me joining the LDS Church (in those days you needed parental consent to be baptized unless you were 21 years old!!), she became very supportive about serving a mission, etc.