Parenting often feels like a tenuous balance between coordinating daily events and preparing these children for their adult future.
Right now: It's time to get up. Your alarm went off 20 minutes ago. You have to be ready to leave in half an hour.
Future: You need to figure out how to wake up reliably because one day you'll be on your own, and I won't be there to see if you hit snooze too many times.
Right now: Make sure you have all your clothes laid out for tomorrow. You need running clothes, school clothes and your concert uniform.
Future: When you're in college, you might not have time to do laundry every other day. You'll need to plan ahead to make sure you have what you need for at least a week.
Right now: Where is your agenda for the week? What assignments are due tomorrow? How many hours do you need to set aside to study for that test?
Future: You need to find a system that works for you to help you organize deadlines independently.
Parenting is also preparing these children for their real lives right now — not just the logistical gymnastics but the moments that sharpen and reveal character.
We adults tend to divide a lifetime into two easy segments: childhood and adulthood. We sometimes forget that children are fully engaged right now, listening to what we say, mimicking what we do. Their lives don't magically launch when they graduate high school or college. They're entrenched in the real world today.
My 12-year-old is in the middle of seventh grade, learning how to calculate the area of a circle, how to write a short-answer response with embedded quotations and how to play increasingly difficult melodies on the oboe. She's picked up a few other skills, too.
This week she was in a small group of young people. A boy began to make racist comments.
"You have to stop," Katie told him. "That's not OK, whatsoever."
He insulted her. She didn't back down. He insulted her again. She held her ground.
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| Katie, yesterday after church |
She summoned courage and relied on strong conviction to speak truth. She moved beyond self-advocacy, a skill we've been working on for years, to advocate for others.
Katie isn't practicing for real life. She's in the middle of it.
We talk through all kinds of scenarios at home. What would you do if you see someone being bullied? What would you do if someone offers you drugs? What would you do if someone texts you, asking for a nude photo? What would you do if you're at a party and you're not comfortable with what's going on around you?
I think in some ways I've considered these conversations sort of good luck charms. If we talk about the possibilities enough and prepare for them, they won't actually ever happen.
Instead, I'm realizing, there's no way to anticipate every possible conversation. Because I've never once asked my children, "What would you do if someone starts maligning an entire group of people based solely on race or gender or religion?"
We can't provide our children a script for every possible encounter or event. We can't inoculate them from trouble. We can't expect that they'll behave with grace or common sense every single time, either. That's not because they're children — but because they're human.
Tyra Damm is a Briefing columnist. She can be reached at tyradamm@gmail.com.
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