Why I Let My Son Listen to Eminem

No one in my immediate family has ever been divorced. To my knowledge, there has never been anyone with a drug or alcohol problem. Following the loss my 37-year-old cousin who bravely fought Leukemia, the only death we’ve experienced was that of my 95-year-old grandmother.

I’m blessed beyond measure, and I know it.

However, the downside to this “charmed life,” as some would call it, is that I have inadvertently raised sheltered children.

It wasn’t intentional. I didn’t shield them from the harsh realities of life out of fear or denial or even a naive belief that if we don’t acknowledge it, it doesn’t exist. The simple truth is that in our every day life, many of life’s common tragedies simply don’t exist.

But our every day life is not all there is. There’s a great big world out there and I firmly believe that one of my primary responsibilities as their mother is to prepare my boys to enter into that world, armed and ready for battle. They will be expected to function and to thrive in a world that will throw physical, emotional, and spiritual obstacles in their way. While they will encounter thousands of wonderful people who help them be the best them they can be, life isn’t always filled with playmates and supporters. They will also have to learn to live among those who will challenge them and, at times, want to tear them down.

But what’s a mom to do? How do I prepare my kids for a future they can not avoid, while still protecting their hearts and minds in the now?

How do we educate our children, without wounding? How do we make them aware, without making them afraid?

We all know how important it is to talk to our kids. And while the media would like to say there isn’t enough of that going on due to busy and distracted parents, my experience is that parents are talking to their kids, and more importantly, kids are listening. But so much of what we discuss with our kids stems from events and experiences that happen organically. And if your life looks at all like mine or those in my immediate sphere of reality, there aren’t always a lot of organic ways to broach the tough discussions.

I learned early on that like most things, if conversations are initiated by me, the discussion ends almost as quickly as it began – not because my kids have entered the No-Mom Zone (I think I still have a few years until that officially happens) – but because they’re not ready yet. Their minds simply aren’t ready for some of the concepts or ideas I’m trying to convey.

However, if I wait patiently and listen more than I speak, I will inevitably get a glimpse of what they are ready for, and what direction their minds are going.

Throughout the last year or two, it hasn’t been the news that’s prompted meaningful conversations in our house. It has been music. Luke and I share a love of music- live, recorded, new or old. We love to listen, dance and sing terribly off-key. More importantly, though, we love to talk about what we listen to.

Recently, as we were rocking out to “Headlights” by Eminem, Luke began asking questions. And I began giving answers. We began to talk about some real-world stuff within the safe walls of his real world- our home.

I won’t bore you by taking you through the song lyric by lyric, but the story Eminem tells is a beautifully tragic look back at a young man’s life through the eyes of his older, more grown up self. The perspective of a man is so much different from that of a child, as we all know. A child only knows the pain he feels, not the pain of those around him. He only knows his loss, his anger, his sadness, his disappointment. A child is not capable of understanding the perspective of anyone outside himself. But a man is fully capable of that. A man can still own his pain while recognizing the pain of others.

These are heavy lessons for an 11-year-old. But they are beautiful lessons. My sheltered son, as we printed out and talked about this song line by line, learned what it must feel like to be the child of someone with an emotional or psychological illness. My son, who has only a handful of friends from divorced homes, was given a picture of what it would be like to be taken away from your family, your home. My tween, who’s beginning to argue for the sake of arguing, has a better understanding of how lucky he is to live in a home where there’s sometimes yelling and lots of times consequences, but would never become a verbal war zone.

My sweet, faithful boy got a glimpse of what regret and forgiveness and grace look like. All from an Eminem song.

As a mom, I will continue to fight the battle of protecting and exposing. There’s no magic answer as to when my children will be ready to learn about the evils in our world or even the best way to show them those things when they are ready. I’m sure I will err on the side of caution more often than not. Meaning, I will not-so-inadvertently raise sheltered kids for a while longer.

Because if I have learned anything in my 11+ years as a parent it is this: I can’t stop them from experiencing the world, but I sure as hell can have a say in how they experience it.

That’s just my normal.

Vicky Willenberg is is a wife, mother and obsessive volunteer at her sons’ school. She works in Digital Marketing and Communications while juggling the class bake sale, folding laundry from two weeks ago and searching for the dog who escaped, yet again. You can find her chronicling the good, the bad and the hilarious on her blog, The Pursuit of Normal and on Facebook and Twitter Vicky has been featured on Scary Mommy, Mamalode, Mamapedia and BlogHer. She’s also had the privilege of being published in both HerStories Project anthologies.