This is the time of year where high school and college students are celebrating their victory over the confines of academia through various graduation ceremonies and what have you. Those are great moments in the life of a young person as they signify years of dedication finally paying off in obtaining a diploma or degree. Even though it's been better than a decade since I last walked that aisle as a graduate, I can still remember the feeling of excitement knowing that I had accomplished something awesome brought to me. I earned an honors diploma from Buford High School and I graduated cum laude from Francis Marion University. During commencement, I knew I'd worked hard and I'd earned what I was about to receive. I think that's an important sensation that people in their late teens and early twenties need to experience, especially in today's economy when finding a good job isn't exactly easy. It's proof that a reward comes from sacrifice and dedication, not from merely showing up or doing only what's required to get by.
I've said all that to say this. I'm a little sick of seeing so much hubbub about kids "graduating" from kindergarten, preschool, or even middle school for that matter. (Please, dear readers, enhance your calm and refrain from hurling flaming arrows at my house until the end of the blog. I'm not saying I'm going to back off of my opinion by then, I just want you to read the whole thing because it helps my site statistics.) Why do I feel this way? To be perfectly honest, it's because of the fact that I feel like parents are raising a generation of children who are going to feel entitled to everything and who exist under the notion that everything they do, no matter how insignificant, is a major achievement.
This isn't a new state of mind I've recently adopted, rather it's become exacerbated by recent events. I recall going to a tee-ball game several years ago where no one kept score, everyone got to run the bases, and everyone went home feeling like they were a winner. I thought I'd suffered some sort of psychotic episode and my mind had trapped me in whatever Godforsaken realm it is where Barney the Dinosaur and the Teletubbies exist.
While watching the game, I thought back to when I was a child playing tee-ball for P&M Trucking. I remember the team name well because our uniforms were a distinctive combination of green jerseys and yellow trucker hats - if you didn't know any better you'd have thought we were sponsored by John Deere. I didn't get to play that much, you see, because I was exceptionally good at hitting the tee but not so much the ball. Probably the highlight of my tee-ball career was an attempted base slide - notice I use the word "attempted". Lets just say it was a bad idea, well-intentioned as it were. For one I'd never so much as even practiced such a maneuver before not to mention the fact that we didn't wear full pants, rather these white short-shorts, meaning my posterior was more than a bit sore in the days following that game. We wore the same thing when I played recreational league basketball. Seeing as I was a husky lad they made me look like I was wearing hot pants instead of athletic gear, which I'm sure was quite the sight.
I know we kept score and I know we played as close to a legitimate game of baseball as we could without involving pitching, obviously. We felt good when we won and we felt bad when we lost - the same was true when I played basketball. (True story, I played for a rec league basketball team that lost every single game - our coach even quit on us during the season. What a role model that guy was!) We always got a cold drink and a Little Debbie cake afterwards regardless of how we performed but the point of these past two paragraphs is that we weren't coddled into thinking we had done something remarkable when we hadn't. Quite frankly, I know I'm better off for it.
Why? Having worked to earn something - whether it be a win in a tee-ball game, an honors diploma, a car, or a house - makes you appreciate its value that much more. It's fine to encourage people with gifts or an occasional freebie but the danger there is that after a while it becomes a part of their character to expect things to be given to them. They've so rarely had to exert any effort towards a goal (for that matter they may not even know what the concept of a goal is) that doing so feels unnatural, and then they complain about not getting their way instead of striving to overcome.
It's the same reason why there are signs at national parks stating "DO NOT FEED THE ANIMALS"; behavioral science shows us that over time they'll become dependent on a handout and forget their natural capacity to forage for themselves. That's what's going to happen to our society if we keep letting kids think everyone is a winner when it comes to tee-ball, we'll wind up with a culture that doesn't know what to do when life requires them to take action. They'll all be standing around crying, wanting to know why the team mom isn't there to give them a soda and a treat.
I don't mean to say that you, as a parent, shouldn't cheer on your child in everything that they do. (I mention this because, in case you weren't aware, I'm not a parent. My wife & I are trying as we both would love to start a family but we haven't been blessed as of yet with our own little bundle of joy.) Very much the opposite, as a matter of fact. I think parents should do their best to encourage their children towards success. In my mind, that means showing them the value of hard work while giving them the tools to develop character traits like perseverance and determination. I don't think you can do that by instilling in them at a young age the perception that they'll be fine just by virtue of showing up.
I don't believe I've ever told anyone this but one of my biggest inspirations in life after graduating from college was something that Dr. Luther F. Carter, President of Francis Marion University, said to me as he handed me my degree, "You made it this far now lets see what you can do with it." If I had never been pushed to work hard by my parents, I would never have bothered to take honors or advanced placement classes in high school. If I had never taken those classes in high school, I wouldn't have gotten the scholarships that allowed me to go to college without paying a dime for tuition. If I hadn't done my best to get through college, I wouldn't have graduated with honors. If I didn't do any of that, I wouldn't be the director of information technology for an entire county in the state of South Carolina. Not too bad of a record for someone who isn't even 33 years old yet.
In wrapping up this rant, I hope none of this someday comes back to bite me in the rear. It's easy for me to say all these things but the truth of the matter is that parenting doesn't come with an instruction manual. Be that as it may, all of us need to remember that kids deserve to be kids and that we, either as parents or potential parents, should keep in mind that just because we want our children to strive for success whatever that "success" is may be totally different in their eyes than it is ours. Don't push them towards being an accountant if they love working with animals, or try to convince them that engineering is the way to go when they'd sooner be painting. Teach them to be the best that they can be at whatever it is they are best at. That way they might grow to be not just content with their life but successful and happy.
No comments:
Post a Comment