Teach your children well
Turning a kid from a kid into a functioning adult is harder work than one imagines. At least, it’s harder than one imagines before they are tasked with the job. Life is full of firsts and each one brings its own interesting twists and turns. Yesterday, my daughter got her first high school tardy. For someone that hardly ever gets in trouble, it was a lot more traumatic than it needed to be.
That combined with a complaint about how much playing time she is getting on the volleyball team sets up the perfect template for a life lesson. The tardy wasn’t completely her fault. Somehow, they never are. The lack of playing time is not completely fair. I’ve been on the other end of that argument and I know it really never is.
The challenge for any parent is determining which (if any) of these situations to get involved in and which to let go as a learning experience. We’ve decided to split the difference. We offer advice on how to deal with the situation so she can get more playing time or get her tardy expunged, but ultimately she is going to have to do it for now. That may change if an adult doesn’t respond responsibly, but that rarely ever happens.
The question of whether to allow children to fight their own battles is an important one. It’s an important question that brings us to where we are right now. Millions of children grew up with helicopter parents. I know because I’ve taught a few of them over the years. Naturally, the reverse is also true. Many children grow up with absentee parents. That somehow fits more of the parents I’ve worked with.
Discovering that life is not fair is an important life lesson. Discovering that we have to do things that may not make immediate sense is also a life lesson. It’s a lesson that obviously needs to be learned based on what we are experiencing now. I’m fully vaccinated and yet I wear a mask at work. That combination doesn’t make sense to millions around this country.
Millions also don’t get the concept of inoculating yourself against a disease they cannot see. They may not know anyone that’s had it. If they do then they can excuse themselves because that other guy (or girl) is a lot less healthy than they are. Besides, their buddy at work told them about a new drug they can take that’s much easier than the vaccine. Sure, they have to go down to the feed store to pick it up, but that’s not a big deal.
The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Our children tend to reflect our values. They are a reflection of the values we raised them with. We are a reflection of our parent’s values. Even when we didn’t get along and cursed them under our breath we still unwittingly became them in many ways.
Yet, there’s a difference. Teachers especially know one thing to be true. We often remember the worst thing a teacher ever did to us and we vow that we will never ever do that to a kid. We may remember the worst thing our parents did. For many this became a shield to ward off life’s most unpleasant experiences.
Losing the big game turned into everyone getting a trophy. Not getting picked for the team became everyone participating at the YMCA and getting equal playing time. Getting stuck at a school that doesn’t fit me became school choice, charter schools, and magnet schools.
Then, there is the vaccine. We have become a victim of our own success. No one my age knows anyone that has had the measles, mumps, small pox, or polio. They hear stories from the old folks, but it becomes a “back in my day…” kind of thing and gets quickly tossed aside. So, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that many have determined they don’t need it. Except you hear stories every day about someone you know (or someone that someone you know knows) going to the hospital or dying. If only we had been forced to live through those difficult times maybe we’d turned out differently. Sometimes fighting your own battles is a valuable experience.
Reminds me of what my mom constantly told the six of us: I never want to hear you say that 4-letter F word. Fair. Life’s not fair, deal with it. She died last year at nearly 99, and I can still hear the growl in her voice when she said that.
1I don’t know anyone who’s died of the bubonic plague, or the Spanish Flu. I do know that the former wiped out close to 30% of Europe’s population, and the latter killed off more people than died during WW1. I also know that Washington mandated his troops be inoculated against smallpox, at Valley Forge. roughly 10% of those inoculated died as a result. Washington could live with that, knowing the other 90% were relatively safe from the disease. anyone with a passing glance at history should be aware of these facts, and the lessons to be learned.
I also attended Catholic Schools. one of the basic lessons taught by the Nuns & Priests, is that God helps those who help themselves.
to summarize, willful ignorance won’t get you into heaven anymore.
2True Cpinva and that is kind of the point. I suppose that kind of begs the question of when it all came tumbling down. My parents grew up right after WWII. So, their parents did the rationing and shared sacrifice in addition to making it through the Depression. That mentality was passed down to my sister and I, but I have to admit that we aren’t as flexible as they were.
Look up and we have slowly become a people unwilling to sacrifice anything. At least that’s the case for some among us. It’s just a sad commentary of a country that once understood that you can’t necessarily have everything you want anytime you want it. It’s difficult to pinpoint where that shared sacrifice went off the rails and turned into this.
3Back in the day, a friends kids got chickenpox, a couple days later the friends got it too. The kids recovered fairly quickly, but my friends were deathly sick. Neither set of grandparents could come help because they hadn’t had chickenpox and it might be fatal for them. A bunch of us took turns to cook and take it over for the oldest (6 y/o) to give everyone. When I read about COVID and folks not taking the vaccine, I think about how dire this case of chickenpox was and how those who have had chickenpox now can get shingles. COVIDs effect are chickenpox on steroids!
4When I was about 7 the boy across the street contracted polio at the age of 13. He went from playing football with his older brothers to being in an iron lung for months. He’s now about 80 and has suffered from post-polio syndrome for at least 20 years. The Salk vaccine was discovered about a year too late for him.
When I read or hear about people my age who still won’t get the Covid vaccine because of “freedom” or whatever, I just want to shake them. Here we have a way out of this mess and they’ve learned nothing.
5I had them all. Miserable.
6Except polio.
But I knew 2 people who used crutches because of polio.
My grandmother lived through the Spanish flu. She knew several people who died.
I had an acquaintance in my neighborhood who said she got vaccinated, but didn’t trust it because it was developed so fast.
Modern technology made it possible to create the Covid 19 vaccine within a year. I’ve taken the jabs. I feel fine and I didn’t grow a tail or anything.
My mom was sent to a private school at the age of 8 to keep her away from the Spanish flu. My late aunt’s family left San Francisco to escape the contagion.
7Nick, about your comments-“Look up and we have slowly become a people unwilling to sacrifice anything. At least that’s the case for some among us. It’s just a sad commentary of a country that once understood that you can’t necessarily have everything you want anytime you want it. It’s difficult to pinpoint where that shared sacrifice went off the rails and turned into this.”
8My thoughts:
Back when people of whatever political leaning were willing to sacrifice for everyone around them and do simple things (like get get vaccinated) or harder things, we didn’t have the false information barrage of social media or fux news, etc., or the trumpf cult. Can’t pinpoint the exact year(s) where our shared concern for each other went off the rails, but certainly during the last 5-6 years it’s gotten noticeably worse and toxic.
Had we had the same type of misinformation and political toxicity back when vaccines were developed to basically eradicate childhood illnesses, I’m not sure a good portion of us or our kids or grandkids would be with us today.
I’m sure that the workplace and teamwork I enjoyed before I retired 6 years ago would be totally different if the same level of political toxicity and misinformation were as pervasive then. So my opinion is things went completely off the rails in the last 6 years. And that’s the same period the trumpf cult infected the (formerly) “United” States became malignant.
I had measles (both kinds), mumps, and chicken pox. I had a friend on leg braces and another with a mom in wheelchair, both from polio. I dated a guy whose mother had died from smallpox when he was 3. And then there was the elderly maiden lady who always sat in the front row at church. She was “Miss” her entire life (and died in her late 80’s) because her fiance had died of Spanish Flu in Army camp in WWI. We lived that history, or knew people who had, and we learned from it.
But those who are unfamiliar with history are doomed to repeat it.
As for when things went off the rails, I saw it happen when we went from the “We’re all in this together” of Jimmy Carter’s White House, to the “Greed is Good” and “Let’s dumb down education so we can indoctrinate more voters” of the Reagan Administration.
9I’m young enough to have been vaccinated for the worst of the childhood diseases, but did have chicken pox at age 6. The rubella vaccine (German measles) came out when I was in grade school. Mom marched all three kids to the doctor to get it. And she explained to us that it wasn’t just for us, rubella is pretty mild in kids, but for all of the pregnant women in the neighborhood. Rubella can tear up a fetus, and we had a duty to help protect them.
10OMG … I’ve become one of “them,” the “old folks.”
re: “No one my age knows anyone that has had the measles, mumps, small pox, or polio. They hear stories from the old folks, but it becomes a “back in my day…”
I personally had measles and mumps (and chickenpox, and a few other “ordinary” childhood diseases). I knew a friend who went to school with me from grades 1-12 who had polio when he was 3 or 4 — it meant he was a year older than others in his class, wore braces and/or rode a wheelchair, and worked diligently at some breathing exercises (enough to make PE-class wrestling with him an exercise in humiliating losses). One classmate was one of the very, VERY few who had a case of bubonic plague (NM is a special place to live – it has about half of all US cases).
I hope you will be able to get to the “old folks” stage of talking about a vanquished COVID.
11Like a few others here, I’m of a generation that had mumps, measles (I had measles on my 10th birthday and had to stare at my brand-new three-speed Schwinn for two weeks before I could ride it), whooping cough, chickenpox.
Texas seems to be full of “my body, my choice; your body, my choice” people.
12On the victims of their own success (vaccines):
There are those who remember those old deadly diseases. My wife’s mother died of polio. My mother suffers from post-polio syndrome now.
I had 4-H Christmas carollers come to my house in 2012. Turns out one mom of the girls was an anti-vaxxer. The girl gave me the mumps, not something you want to get in your fifties (and yes, you can get mumps more than once). I nearly died from that.
I also came down with chickenpox twice as an adult. When the shingles vaccine came out I was ready to take a tire iron with me to get to the front of the line for the vaccine (my great-grandmother had shingles and she was in awful pain every time she had an outbreak).
13John @ #11,
I’m really a cusper. I did get chicken pox when I was in first grade and was right at the tail end of the small pox vaccine regime. My father is considerably older than his brothers which means my sister and I are considerably older than our cousins. We are more like aunt and uncles than cousins with most of them. Two in particular are anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers. I’ve had several conversations with one and it checks all of the boxes. He is uneducated and yet knows everything. His new wife “works in the medical field” but I’m not quite sure what she does and she doesn’t do it in a hospital. This somehow outweighs what my wife with a PhD says. He even mentions stuff he sees on the YouTubes. I could tell all kinds of stories about him and his brother, but suffice it to say they fit the general tenor of this post.
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