My “No No No No Yes” Parenting Style is Coming Home to Roost

Raising a lawyer

SG Buckley

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Photo by Bruno Nascimento on Unsplash

When my daughter was born, my aunt said, “Oh no, a Scorpio daughter with an Aquarius mother. Good luck!’ She was speaking from experience, and kidding, sort of, about the dynamic between these two powerful, clashing signs.

More US presidents are Scorpios than any other sign. Scorpios were tied with Aquarians until Biden came along. I just put that out there.

I’m not really into astrology, but now that I’ve gone down this road, I should say that I’m not the typical Aquarius. I’m more a go-with-the-flow, path of least resistance type. My daughter, on the other hand, is a classic powerful, dominant, take no prisoners type Scorpio. My parenting style has only made her stronger.

A typical exchange can be reduced to:

Her: “I want X.”

Me: “No, no, no, no, yes.”

She wears me down.

Years ago, I remember reading about a mother of a dozen kids. She said the only way to raise a dozen kids was to say something once and stick by it. She’d be in a store buying something they really wanted. One kid would misbehave and she’d yank them all of the shop and drive straight home.

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SG Buckley
SG Buckley

Written by SG Buckley

Writer, editor, parent. Former staffer at Quartz, WSJ and Inc. magazine.

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