It’s been a rough couple of weeks of parenting, with more on the horizon. G is 16. Even though teaching A to drive went much more smoothly than I anticipated, and so far, he has proved to be an apt student, G is a different ball of wax. Even though he’s younger, his hobbies and part-time jobs have allowed for him to have more exposure to farm equipment, towing trailers, a lot of general car things.

He also recently made me aware that Steve used to let him drive our old vehicle “all over the farm, all of the time.” While I have no doubt he will be more than competent behind the wheel, I desperately want him to have the same sense of caution that has served A well.

At the same time, G’s general nature and attentiveness to detail usually makes him the first person to observe that the car is making a funny noise, or that we might have taken a wrong turn. Coincidentally, I have to vehicle shop. It’s become apparent that I need to have a pickup truck at my disposal. Steve was always happy to and capable of attaching the trailer to the back of the SUV for hauling things, but after a few tries, it’s just going to be easier and safer for me to use a truck.

G has been trying to convince me to get a full-sized pickup truck, instead of a smaller one. Of course, he has had many practical reasons for wanting this, not just the fact that his kayak fits more comfortably into the larger truck. If Steve were here, the larger truck would be the obvious answer, not even questioned, but now it seems like a lot for a mom and a few teenagers.

We’re pretty much stuck with the truck decision once we make it, and I’m just not feeling confident about making the right one, so, I will continue to put it off. That seems to be the status quo right now, as A is wrestling with a lot of tough decisions right now. He’s months away from being a technical adult, and another few months away from heading out on his own, at least temporarily.

I have been trying to take a step back and let him deal with the punches that are thrown at him on his own. This has been a mixed bag, with more failures than successes, I’m afraid.

Recently, we’d had a conversation where I chose to sugarcoat things a little less than I may have in the past. I gave him an honest opinion, which he didn’t like very much, and in no time at all, in his mind, we were on opposite sides of the fence.

In my mind, I know I was playing the Steve role of devil’s advocate. I wasn’t comfortable with the role, and I am certain my bungling of it didn’t help the situation. Anxious to resume my role as good cop, I retreated from my original stance, and tried to assuage his feelings, by which time he didn’t care to listen to a word I said, and I had become the enemy.

Again, I just couldn’t help feeling that even though Steve might have expressed the same sentiments, there would have been a balance, or at least someone to cushion the blow. After a few days, things blew over, and we seem to be back to normal, but I sense a bit of tentativeness in our discussions now. Whether it’s his or mine, I am not sure.

Recently, a friend of mine who is in education posted a short meme on social media that summed up the sentiment that sometimes teachers can show us who we don’t want to be. I have been thinking about that a lot, even though I’m not in the teaching profession. In my head, I substituted parents. Through coaching, and spending summers watching families at public swimming pools, by the time I was ready to start a family, I’d learned about the kind of parent I didn’t want to be.

Sure, sometimes great kids have terrible parents, and sometimes great parents end up with terrible kids, but by and large, in my experience, once I see the kids in action, I have a pretty good idea of what kind of parents they have. Although, one caveat is that the pandemic has changed a lot of things. In the past year, I’ve seen a lot of zigs, when I was expecting a zag.

So, maybe it’s not an exact science, but at least at the beginning stages of building our family, Steve and I knew exactly the kind of parent we wanted to be: strict, but appropriately fun, demanding, while flexible, and above all, we wanted them to know they were loved, unconditionally.

As of Jan. 8, 2022, I thought we were doing a decent job of things. Since then, however, I’ve been the parent I always wanted not to be. Recently, A had to call me about a car problem he thought he was having. Even if it had been a worst-case scenario (and it ended up being next to nothing), I should have been happy that he and his passenger were all right, he was only a mile away from home, and he called me first.

Instead, I lost my temper a bit, because I’d just had the car in the shop the previous week, so either the problem wasn’t correctly fixed, or we had a new problem. Additionally, the next day’s activities required two cars and two drivers, and I hadn’t figured out how to make that work by the time I arrived to help him out.

I was tired, it was late, and I was also sure that Steve would have known immediately what the problem was, and with him, we could have had an adult and a kid everywhere they needed to be the next day, even with only one car. Instead, I was solo, and flubbing everything.

For now, I tell the kids to imagine what Dad would say if he were here, or maybe ad a “you know what Dad would think,” which is usually greeted with an eye roll because he was never quiet about what he thought. It’s also no longer about being the parent I want to be or don’t want to be. It comes down to being the parent that I have to be.

Liz Pinkey is a contributing columnist who appears weekly in the Times News.