Parenting Fumbles: Expecting Too Much From Our Kids
We were all raised imperfectly and we will most definitely raise our children imperfectly, as well. Our imperfections come with the territory and we can ill afford to be obsessed about them. A parenting expert once quoted the French philosopher, Voltaire, “The best is the enemy of the good.” By that, it is assumed that he meant that we can be so focused on getting things perfect that we don’t get things right.
Whatever we do, it need not be ‘perfect’. We can never be perfect, but we do have to give our best effort or even any effort at all. Some parents are sterling role models, whose children just stand out in behavior, bearing, confidence, attitude, politeness, you name it. But when we really look into the matter, we all know this is too good to be true.
Our expectations from our children can make all the difference in their upbringing. If they see that we only care for low quality output, that is what they will deliver. It’s human nature. We adjust effort to expectations in our place of work. If the expectations are set low, then our effort and output are low, too.
A more important issue here is school and studies. We can also go the other extreme and say that school is all that matters, that grades are all that matter. Some children have even gone to the thinking that their parents’ love for them is dependent on how high their grades are.
Grades are numbers or letters that we use to keep score. They are, at best, indicators of something – maybe success, intelligence, effort, virtue, character, etc. Maybe they are like the other positive numbers in our life – assets, salary, ratios, stock portfolios, ROI, etc. They probably mean something, but, ultimately, they are numbers and things.
So when we tell our kids that we expect them to do well in their studies, we tell them the limits of grades. Grades are not everything, but they are not meaningless. We also set them up for success. We do not simply set expectations, then sit back and wait for them to deliver the goods. We have to equip them, support them, mentor them, and monitor them.
There are parents who do not want their children to have a tough life the way they did. This usually comes from parents who made something of themselves against all odds, especially a desperately poor background. The stories are real: walking to school and skipping meals because of lack of money, stretching what little they had and skimping on everything, making the best of a sub-quality education, which were all their parents could afford.
These parents lived what American writer William Faulkner spoke of when he said that the poor know the joy and despair of a penny found and a penny lost. They had no nest egg from their parents to start with upon graduation. They fixed their sights on what they could do rather than wallow in self-pity or embarrassment.
Parents in this predicament have lost sight of how hardship shaped their lives for the better and taught them to be tough, resilient, resourceful, hardworking, and demanding on themselves. The desire to spare their kids the bitterness is understandable, but misdirected.
These lessons packaged well can make a real mark on their children’s values. We all know the value of story-telling, but we can get carried away and sound boastful or we may give the impression that the lesson is a cudgel we bear to pummel our kids with on cue.
It is never too early to think about our children’s future. Good parents are aware that they are raising children to be adults. We have to keep our eyes on the target and not be distracted by noise nor by our own shortcomings.
Popularity: 2% [?]
