Hey Guys!
Have you ever noticed some of the criticisms directed at parents from the halls of academia? Parents are supposedly ‘too involved’ with their adult college children, too interventionist with their children’s teenage friends and appear to be looking over the shoulders of their child’s grade and middle school teachers?
Why do parents do this?
Obviously, because getting involved gets the results all parents want… better performance. It reminds me of the saying-or at least my version of it:
” if you let the village raise your child…
don’t be surprised if you end up with the village idiot.”
Most parents — if they try a bit — can find ways in which they can teach their children or help them ‘be all they can be.’ Ask youself: what do I know that could help my kids reach the next level?
Were you an athlete? artist? musician? good in math? Or are you a good observor of people? Can you protect them from ‘bad associations”? Can you offer advice? Can you help them avoid the mistakes we all made at their ages?
I was an athlete, and when my children decided that they wanted to participate, I offered to help them learn some of the skills, send them to camps and pop for whatever equipment they needed. The parent is the support unit… but the child has to do the hard work. As a ‘supporter’ you can teach, cheer and offer encouragement when they don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel.
The photograph you see above is from 1997. I volunteered to teach some young male and female middle schoolers how to throw the shot and discus… part of the fun was coming up with a design for our ‘shirt’. It stated ‘Laguna Throwers tc’ (tc stands for ‘track club’). I really wasn’t feeling too good here, physically, I weighed about 427 lbs and I was about to go into a diabetic shock … in a couple of years. That is a story in and of itself. Anyway, it was a way to help my daughter… in a way that was meaningful to her…. the rest was history.
So, don’t worry about ruffling a few feathers… after all, none of your child’s friends or teachers have to live with your kid… if things go bad. Studies show that a man in your child’s life is what they need to stay focused, besides, if someone needs to be the ‘bad guy’, it might just as well be you! Remember, your time and investment to get your kids on the right road early on when they are young is so much less than waiting for a problem to develope when they get older…… then, it takes so much more effort and so much more money to help them get back on that road if they ended up following a unhappy path.
Good Luck,
Roger Freberg
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