“I was such a rule follower! What happened?” I said to my husband after my kids once again ignored my directions and ran away laughing.

While they follow directions pretty well in school, I know I’m not the only one their anti-authoritarian streak comes out around. My mom has given them The Look she perfected after decades of teaching. They shrug it off. If you start counting without a very specific consequence attached to it, they just look at you, wondering what the point of this counting is. Authority for authority’s sake does not resonate for my children.

In contrast, I was a kid who really respected hierarchy. Rules helped me make sense of the world. Clearly, breaking them would lead to no good. When I did something wrong, I ran and told my mom immediately, just because I felt so guilty about it. My teenage rebellion was non-existent. On the hard nights, when I collapse into the couch at bedtime totally drained, I wish my kids were this way too.

But then I think back to the people I know who were rebels as kids. My great-grandmother, who jumped off a roof without an umbrella before Mary Poppins did it. She also stole the bows off of graves to put in her her hair. I’d die if my kids did either of those things! My aunt, who snuck away to a weekend music festival as a teenager without telling my grandmother. My own mom, who played practical jokes on her mom and would glare at my grandfather when he spanked her instead of crying. My sister-in-law, who ran around the house like a banshee before bedtime, much like my own kids.

You know what’s true of all of them? They turned out to be fine adults. As mentioned, my mom worked as an amazing teacher for decades. My sister-in-law is a freaking oncology nurse, doing work that is unimaginably hard. A strong will and creative mind that’s challenging to parents can result in adults that change the world.

Thinking about these shenanigans and the people those kids grew into is comforting to me. My kids refusing to put pajamas on is small in the grand scheme of things, no matter how annoying it seems at the moment. Just because they aren’t listening this very second doesn’t mean they’re never listening to me. It just means it takes a while to sink in. Hopefully, it will also mean that it sinks in deeper than automatic obedience, although there are no guarantees!

I can’t predict my kids’ future. I can’t know if they’re going to be nurses or teachers or engineers or musicians or something else altogether. But I can know when they’re running around like wild children at bedtime that they aren’t alone in my family. I also know that even if they aren’t following directions that very moment, they will remember my love shown night after night after night.

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