Tag Archives: parenting

The Subtleties of Privilege

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I’ve been teaching first year college writing seminars since my oldest daughter was knee high. Now that she’s a first year college student herself I sporadically think about her when interacting with my students. Sometimes I imagine her sitting around our seminar table. What kind of discussant would she be? Would she tune in or go through the motions? Be bold enough to come to office hours? Appreciate my killer sense of humor? How would her writing compare to theirs?

Most recently I’ve been thinking about how her college experience compares to theirs. Her family is flawed, but more stable and secure than average. As a result, her life is more simple than some of my students’ lives, one who has missed a few classes as a result of “family business emergencies” and another who disappeared for a week and a half because of serious domestic problems. She doesn’t know it, but her comparatively uncluttered mind is a subtle, but significant form of privilege. When it comes to her homebase, she doesn’t have to worry about substance abuse, abusive behavior, violence, estrangement, or divorce. Consequently, in class, at swim practice, hanging with friends late at night, she has no excuse not to be fully in the moment.

When it comes to her family, my guess is that most of the time her orientation is “out of sight, out of mind”. We’re social media luddites meaning we don’t exchange a constant stream of text-messages. Alright I confess, we don’t exchange texts at all. However, we do enjoy Sunday night skyping. Last Sunday though, she texted younger sissy and said she was hosting a prospective student so now we’ve gone a week and half with zero contact. Not complaining, just illustrating how relaxed she is about her distant family’s well-being.

Maybe the most challenging aspect of parenting is striking the best balance between providing your children a stable and secure foundation while simultaneously giving them increasingly challenging responsibilities that prepare them for independence and adulthood. Provide the former without the later and you run the risk of children developing a debilitating sense of entitlement. Provide the later without the former and odds are the increasingly challenging responsibilities will prove overwhelming.

I worry that some of my students may not persist to graduation because their chaotic family lives will prevent them from attending class regularly and they may not roll up their sleeves and strengthen their basic skills enough to earn passing grades in increasingly difficult courses.

And I worry my daughter may not fully realize the extent of her privilege.

The All Important Middle School Years

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For adults with children at home. If that doesn’t describe you, consider forwarding the link to a parent friend.

I’m not God’s gift to parenting, I’m sharing my story in the hope of provoking conversation and proving helpful in some small way.

As a young parent I had a hunch. My adolescence and gut told me that the quality of my daughters’ close friend decision-making would go a long ways to determining how they’d turn out as young adults. Consequently, we talked about it a lot and both daughters processed our teaching, but in very different ways.

Social scientists are finding out what many parents already know, siblings are often remarkably different one from another. In fact, they’re finding out they’re almost as different as a random sampling of children.

Our daughters’ close friend decision-making stories are illustrative of two things: 1) how different siblings often are, and 2) how true my initial hunch was that the nature of children’s close friend decision-making greatly influences who they become as young adults.

In this regard, the sixth to eighth grade time period seems especially important. Near the end of fifth grade Eighteen announced that she wanted to go to a small, independent, academically oriented middle school. “But all your friends are going to Washington Middle School.” “I’ll make new ones.” There were 32-34 people in her sixth grade class and the girls subdivided into two groups of eight or so. For some reason I can’t quite explain, Eighteen had no interest in working her way into the “cool” group. Instead, she became very good friends with other girls who were perfectly happy being the “geeks at a school for geeks”.

Individually and collectively they were unusually secure in themselves for twelve and thirteen year olds. Consequently, they unwittingly denied the “cool” group their primary leverage, elevated social status. Social status is only a competition when two or more groups willing enter into competition. Eighteen and her friends opted out of the competition altogether. It was a beautiful thing. They did well in school, they did meaningful community service, they excelled in music and athletics, they encouraged each other academically, they avoided the pitfalls of drugs and alcohol, and then they expanded their circle two and three-fold in their large, comprehensive high school. Now they’re doing well in excellent colleges across the country.

The GalPal and I could have been forgiven if we thought “This is cake.”

When Fifteen was twelve, she decided to attend small, independent, academic middle school too. Similar class size, similar subdivision of girls, totally different outcome. Fifteen wanted in the “in” group. The alpha cool student quickly picked up on this and from the get go took advantage of it by being friendly one day or week and nasty the next. The rest of the inner circle followed the alpha cool student’s lead, so socially, sixth and seventh grade was a hellish time. In an effort to try to fit in she compromised her true values and sense of self. Fortunately, she did this before the “in” group had access to drugs and alcohol.

By eighth grade, she gave up trying to be accepted by a group that she began to realize she didn’t really want to be a part of anyways. Socially, she spent most of the year alternating between making friends with seventh graders and hanging out by herself. Throughout this time, her mom and dad were impressing upon her the importance of befriending people who bring out the best in you, who make you a better person than you otherwise would be. She was tired, frustrated, sad, and very receptive to our teaching at that point.

High school has been redemptive. She has wonderful friends who share her values of doing well in school, respecting oneself and others, being physically active, and she’s healthier and happier than ever. She has a bright future.

She returned from a party the other day where she caught up with a middle school friend who attends a different high school. She learned the alpha cool student has fallen off the straight and narrow and no one from that inner circle is friends with her anymore. I feel badly for her and Fifteen probably does too. Her middle school meanness seemed rooted in insecurities that no doubt have gotten the best of her.

Post-party Fifteen reflected that she’s “so glad” she went through social hell when she did because now she has a better feel for who she is and how to choose and make close friends that share her values. Mutual friendships, friends that willingly accept one another’s quirks, friends that continuously welcome other people into their circle, friends that inspire.

That chapter of our family life was anything but cake. It was hard to watch without swooping in, but had we helicoptered in, we very likely would have shortchanged the personal discoveries and growth Fifteen experienced.

I couldn’t be more proud of her and grateful for her great leap forward.

6:53

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Bonus, Thursday-edition. Parent bragging alert.

6:53. Fifteen’s 500 free time Tuesday night. Awesome breakthrough swim, but she was disappointed because the league meet qualifying time is 6:51. Teammates keep qualifying and she wants to too. She’s dropped about 35 seconds in the last few weeks. Here’s what I said to her afterwards:

You can choose to focus on not making league or on a seventeen second personal record, but why let some league official determine whether it was a good swim or not?! It was an amazing swim, a breakthrough swim! I’m really proud of you. (Feint smile.) All you can do is give your best effort and let the qualifying take care of itself. You did give your best effort and I’m very proud of you. Even more importantly, you’re a great teammate, and a kind and caring person.

Then I committed the one unforgivable high school parenting faux pas. I hugged her and kissed her wet head. . . in public. You think I’d have learned by now.

I love swimming because it’s so damn meritocratic. Fifteen started getting after it in practice about three-four weeks ago. Leading out her lane, swimming with purpose, and lo and behold, the times started falling. Some more experienced talented teammates aren’t working that hard in practice and they’re fading over the second half of races and losing to harder workers.

Granted not all kids have equal opportunities to swim, but once in the water, there’s an awfully strong correlation between training consistency and intensity and performances in meets.

Fifteen has two more chances, today, and next week, to qualify. And before my brother chimes in with “How does it feel to be the third fastest in your family of four?” The cushion is shrinking, but I could still take her.

Evening, post-meet update—6:48.

Thinking in Decades

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Seventeen, who will be eighteen shortly, grew up playing soccer. She was usually one of the weaker players on one of the better teams. Probably the fault of my genetics. Also, soccer was first and foremost social, so she hardly ever played between organized practices and games.

Her uneven play never bothered me because the effort was there, she usually enjoyed it, and she learned how to compete. At the beginning of high school, she applied those lessons to a new sport, swimming, and continues to improve in the water as a result.

This summer some of her former teammates and her formed a recreation team for one final run before they head off to different colleges. No practices, just two games a week. Last night was the final game so I thought I better turn up.

Arriving late, I see the opposing team’s forward streaking down the field all alone set to go in for an easy chip shot. But wait, Seventeen has the angle and she’s FLYING and she disrupts the girl’s momentum just in the nick of time. Is that my daughter? Amazing. A parent tells me she had rolled her ankle pretty badly a few minutes earlier.

I detect a slight limp, but she’s a gamer, loving every minute of it. No pressure, playing with great friends, for FUN. She’s a different player than I’ve ever seen, relaxed, confident, making smart pass after smart pass, checking girls, face red, sweating, focused, animated, just plain getting after it.

Parents, teachers, all adults who work with young people often suffer from “present tense myopia”. We get mired in young people’s physical and social awkwardness without any sense of their more physically and socially competent future selves.

I remember when Seventeen was in second or third grade and was making lots of simple spelling errors (yeah, yeah, probably the fault of my genetics). An elementary education colleague suggested “chilling” because it would naturally improve given her love of reading. He was right.

Parents should prominently display a “This too shall pass” sign somewhere in their kitchen as a reminder that children are constantly evolving.

In the end, it’s far less important how capable a seven or eight year old is in football, baseball, basketball, golf, soccer, swimming, spelling, reading, writing, or math than a seventeen or eighteen year old.

What a kick (pun intended) watching Seventeen last night. Nurture and support the young and then expect them to surprise you too.

When Does Education Stop?

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The title of a 1962 (good year) Michener essay that I recommend. In it he refers to “Big Jobs,” like the novels he wrote, projects that require tremendous amounts of work over long periods of time. While reading the essay I was thinking it would be nice to tackle a big job, but what big job, and could I muster the necessary single-mindedness and stamina to see it through? Truth be told, I get distracted too easily. I’ve backslidden from my three times a day email system, I frequently glance at what the stock market is doing, and as if that isn’t depressing enough, today I’ve been repeatedly checking the weather in the hope I can cycle outdoors tonight. A skilled procrastinator.

My doctoral dissertation, a year-long, 325 page novel of sorts, about a global education high school in SoCal was a big job. So there is a precedent.

Interesting how Michener’s ideas sparked thinking exclusively about my work-life. As a male and the son of a work-centric father, am I less inclined to think about “big jobs” in the context of my personal life? Why, when I was reading the essay, did my “educator identity” trump my “husband” or “father” ones? Building intimate, loving, and supportive relationships with a spouse or children requires tremendous amounts of work for long periods of time. As I’ve written before, when it comes to raising happy, healthy, caring independent young adults, there are no shortcuts.

Eldest hija (Eh) is seventeen and so I can’t use “intimate” to describe our present relationship. She can’t even bring herself to watch her favorite television show (The Office) on the same floor of the house as her mother and me. Last weekend though, we all committed to a grand experiment. We threw caution (and Facebook) to the wind and agreed to spend 48 hours together on the Oregon Coast (a “top ten” most beautiful spot in the U.S.). I’m happy to report we enjoyed one another’s company.

Eh is going away to college in early September. Don’t tell her mom, but I read recently that when young adults go away to college, that’s it, they never come back, except to visit. So the weekend was special, an opportunity to reflect on what type of person she’s become.

Like all parents of seventeen year olds I’m sure, she drives me crazy at times (yes, I know it’s mutual), but in the end, I couldn’t be more proud of who she is becoming. Of all the things I’ve accomplished in my life—beating Lance in the 2009 Black Hills Triathlon, writing a blog post without any spelling errors, driving my wife crazy—seeing the person she has become is the most gratifying of all.

It was a big job well done. Of course her amazing muther gets at least half the credit.

Rollercoaster

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Teaching high school taught me that adolescents can be living, breathing rollercoasters, up one day, down the next. After awhile, I learned not to take the inevitable dips personally.

Which takes us to the other day and my facebooking seventeen year old. “Why are you trying to talk to me?” she asked staring at her laptop. My bad, I’m an awful dad for being interested in last night’s field trip to Seattle.

Fast forward a day. . . the rollercoaster standing in the kitchen, studying page four of my Tacoma Broadway Center for the Performing Arts pamphlet. Gaelic Storm.

I throw caution to the wind. “Wanna go?” “Yeah!”

Surprisingly, she doesn’t get any better offers during the week.

We hit traffic, arrive five minutes late, run through downtown T-town together, and buy two of the last tics.

For the next three hours nagging, tension, and adolescent angst were replaced with clapping, laughing, and singing. Irish music has always moved me in inexplicable ways and seventeen is a talented violinist on a piano playing tear. She was transfixed by Jesse Burns the group’s fiddler who shredded from beginning to end.

Wonderful concert made better by the company.