Where's the manual?

I was speaking with my mother the other day, and she asked me if I felt I missed out since she and my dad hadn’t pushed my older sister and I to learn an instrument, play a sport, or learn to drive as a teenager (I got my license at 27 y.o.). I said, “No.” My school required you to start an instrument in 4th grade and I decided to learn the violin. Even though we could switch to the chorus in 7th grade, I stuck with the violin and even played in the school orchestra in high school. My parents came to just about all of my recitals and orchestra concerts. In 7th grade, I decided to play for the school soccer team. I was so bad, that at the year’s end the coach asked me not to return in any capacity, not even as the equipment person. I agreed with the coach and went on my way. As for driving, as I mentioned, I got my license at 27 y.o. and was fortunate to have a mother and husband, now ex-husband, that were willing to drive and let me be excused from driving and dealing with my nerves around this. It wasn’t until two years ago, that I got my first car and really began driving on my own. My impetus was to learn the drive to “The Cabin” my family’s home in Massachusetts, so I could reciprocate and drive my mother there when she could still go, but no longer could drive. Well, I reached that goal. Therefore my mother shouldn’t feel bad and yet she does. When you have a child or children the doctor, doula, midwife, etc. doesn’t hand you a 1000 page manual with the title, Your Child from Birth to Infinity. There is no parenting manual, just countless books on the subject written by different experts that your head would spin if you read too many. What we bring to parenting is the good and bad of our own parents, our friends’ parents, what our parents told us about the good and bad of their parents, our grandparents, and stories we heard secondhand. There is a story in my family that early in my parents’ marriage, they went to visit friends for the weekend. These friends had taught their son to say the word “blatt” when he didn’t like something. My parents heard a lot of “blatt” that weekend. The takeaway for my parents and me was to encourage a kid to use real words like “I don’t like this,” “I don’t want to do this,” and “This looks disgusting.*” In my opinion kids find more things to dislike than like, so teaching them to communicate with real words is a lesson in communication. Without a manual, we are left to our own devices and some work and others don’t, but in the end, it is all a learning process. Now, I hope my mother’s feeling bad is lessened.

*The Food Rule; Take one bite, swallow it, and then you can tell me you don’t like it. I got this from my childhood, meaning my parents.