In the end, kids will choose

People often ask me how I could bear to watch our oldest son, Steve, former quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, play football.

My answer is that watching is fun in high school, harder in college and sometimes very difficult in the NFL, but it is what he chose to do.

My husband, Grit, and I always felt that football had redeeming values, such as discipline of body and mind, self-confidence, team goal-building and leadership experience.

There is a time when parents can forbid or discourage or channel their children's activities, but it doesn't last long.

Once children know the way and want to get there, the control is largely theirs, unless a parent is willing to go to battle.

There are choices that are worth going to battle for.

In an informal survey of friends, the top taboos seemed to be drug use (including drinking and smoking), driving with anyone who had been drinking, dropping out of school and hitchhiking.

( I informed my kids I would cut off a thumb if I ever caught them trying it.)

After those, the choices seemed to be more personal. One of the forbidden activities in our house was riding motorcycles.

Grit felt most strongly about this because a college football friend lost a leg in a motorcycle accident.

The prejudice was set in stone on a day when we were looking for our first home. We were driving in an area that interested us when a car made a U-turn and broadsided a father and son riding a motorcycle.

The motorcycle had not been traveling fast. We stopped and attended to the injured, made the necessary emergency calls and waited for the police officer.

The child was fine, but the father was taken away in an ambulance. That in itself was sobering, but Grit was later called to testify in court and found that the man had shattered his hip and was so disabled he could no longer work as a concrete finisher.

A few years later, my youngest brother, Val, bought a motorcycle.

My father enjoyed it so much he got a small one that he used to ride back and forth to the grocery store.

At this time, Steve was about 7 years old, and on one visit to my parents he was about to get on the motorcycle with my dad.