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Little One (photo: cwarnercarey / flickr)
Being someone who has more grey hairs than Clairol™ can cover these days, along with a grandson to match, I look at my kids and ask myself on numerous occasions, “Did we do the right thing by our kids?”
Some days, I think the smartest thing we ever did was to get them involved in 4H, which gave them a lot of experience in having to get up every morning, no matter how shitty they felt or how cold it was, to go out and feed the sheep and feed and milk the goats. Considering the amount of nostalgia they express about those experiences (which all seem to take place between May and November; no one remembers slopping buckets of water down their pants when they were going out in 0-degrees F), that decision gets a tick mark in the ‘good idea’ column.
On the other hand, I’ve asked myself more than once whether our emphasis on academics and going to college was the smartest thing. There are days when I think we should have enrolled at least two of them into voc tech and gotten them settled in plumbing or being an electrician. Some parents we know say that their greatest decision was in encouraging their kids to become computer programmers, but they’ve also said that their kids are generally miserable. Not that my kids are miserable – our eldest is a business development specialist for the local cooperative extension and our youngest has what passes these days for a pretty good job locally – he works in the facilities department of our local university and has full health and dental.
I’m not sure that any parent knows what to encourage their kids to do these days. What do you think?
77 Comments
Good morning everybody!!! It’s raining and chilly here in Upstate NY.
I am not sure we ever have known much about encouragin our kids to be anything other than truthful, kind, etc….15-20 years out is a long way to anticipate. But I get your point about confusing b/c the choices are so different from what most of us considered.
Way off topic: The new Time has a fine article on the candidates comparing truthiness with examples, etc. Really interesting. (Hope this is OK)
Good Morning and Thank you, Toby. Not chilly in Central TX but certainly fall is here. Nice
RevBev – heh, no problems. As parents, the DH and I just tried to make sure the kids were able to learn stuff on their own as much as possible, and exposed them to as much as we could, the world has compressed so much that it really is almost impossible to anticipate and predict what skills will be needed besides the ability to read, write, do simple math and learn stuff. I’ve somehow managed over 40 years of working to be able to pick up and do almost anything I put my hands to and that has kept the kitchen full of food and the mortgage paid. I can’t imagine people (and I know there are many now) who have had to make the decision to stay in the US and not have a job or go to someplace like China or India so that they can still do what they were trained to do.
Good Morning, Toby, RevBev, and others to follow….
I can only do the best I can each day. We make decisions based on what we know. So, things change. Maybe a degree today doesn’t mean what it did 50 – 60 years ago. So, I can’t second guess my parenting choices. That’s just me.
Thanks, Toby, one of the drawbacks to being a parent, I think, is that we tend to feel guilt along with concern at whatever goes wrong. But having the joy of owning up to functional adult offspring has a few pleasures, anyway.
Chilly here in N.TX., but I was told that you sometimes see the northern lights up there?
That’s a lifetime dream of mine.
I’m not a parent so my opinion is not relevant in this case.
I feel some of this about my grandson already; his world is so different and will continue to be. And occ. I let myself get really scared. But kids, like the ones I see in a hospital, are sooo hopeful, for the most part.
Ruth – yes, we have seen the Northern Lights up here, perhaps not every year, but certainly I’ve seen them at least 10 times in my lifetime here. Very very striking.
Your outlook on the way ahead is certainly worthwhile…Good Morning.
There I disagree with you. You see and know enough to know what choices we have to make. One is like this; My son has chosen (along with his partner) not to have kids, because he’s so worried about the world he’d be bringing them into.
RevBev – We have a lot of concern for our grandson — but watching him and seeing his interests (anything mechanical, anything with an engine in it), I have the suspicion that he’s going to end up in engineering of some sort. Little do his parents know that I, being the sneaky sort of grandmama that I am, will teach him how to make clothing, just the way I taught all three of our kids. I’m starting on a self-study program on woodworking (hey, I was one of those girls who got shut out of wood shop in junior high..what can I say), and we’ll pass that on to him also.
Glad to hear it. That’s got me really warmed to moving up near there, too.
Incidentally, for those here yesterday who noted I was collecting blanket material for the nearby rescue operations, my friend who runs the operation was delighted. She distributed warm cuddlies to the pups that suffer from cold for last night’s cold snap.
I didn’t choose not to have children. I would have liked to have children and I think I would have been a good parent. It is sometimes still a source of pain to me at age 52 that I am unable. Thanks for the vote but I think I’m sitting this one out. Good morning all and I hope everybody has a wonderful weekend.
Hysterical….I loved woodworking, way more than Home Ec which was another part of the rotation. Funny what you say about your grandson. Im not sure Im seeing that esp in mine, but his dad is an Engineer so he certainly has that exposure.
Margaret, If you’re still around….it is beautiful out there. Im about out….Nice start, Toby. Happy Saturday, folks
Good morning all and thanks so much for the post and host Aunt Toby.
We spent over 20 years pushing our kids toward a university education and so far only 1 of 5 has finished a 4 year degree. She is currently at Brandeis working on a Doctorate. Not sure that will get her a job next year but we are still very proud of her.
We are equally proud of all of our children because more than anything they are productive, upstanding, intelligent, caring and loving people. (honestly, except 1)
More so than ever before I think it is impossible to know how to help your kids be ready for the world because the future looks so uncertain.
I’m so glad you are happy with them, it’s not about that financial ‘success’ that seems to be the only object of too many families.
RevBev – I figure any 18 month old kid who can pick up a screw driver and know what to do with it (not particularly effectively due to the size of his hands versus the size of the screw driver) has the sort of mind that is going to be attracted to something technical or engineering or plumbing or electrical or something like that. And his daddy is an engineer also. I once did a highly unscientific survey of the engineers in my office as to what made them go into engineering – 90% of them said that they had some relative (father, uncle, brother, grandpa) who was an engineer and who encouraged them. when I asked them if they’d been great in science and math in school, most of them said that they had not been superstars of any sort but they figured if this relative thought they could do engineering, who were they to argue? If someone wants to know why there are not more women in engineering or why more people in general don’t go into this sort of thing, I think this aspect is key: This is a field that has been mythologized into a bastion for people who are top in math and science and it also seems to be a field that is passed down as a recommendation by family members. So, we need current engineers to get out into the schools and talk to all sorts of kids early on – like 4,5,6 grade – about what they do, how much money they make, how hard it is and all that, and encourage any kids who are good with their hands, like to draw, are good with languages, like to solve problems of any sort, to think about engineering.
Good morning everyone.
Thank you for the post Toby. Should be an interesting conversation this morning since we always want the best for our kids.
Good morning, friends. Just a drive by today because I’m off to breakfast and the Farmer’s Market.
For RevBev: Time’s Fact Check Fail (FairTV) /politics
We were fortunate to live in a rather upscale community when our son and daughter were in Middle and High School. We weren’t upscale, and our house was modest, but the community standards were high and the schools were excellent.
The kids were swimmers, and we were blessed with a swim coach who was a role model for his swimmers. He had winning teams, but he taught them about both winning with class, and losing (rarely) with class. He worked them hard, and was probably more strict (in a friendly way) than the parents.
My husband took our son and a couple other boys to the Pontiac Silverdome to see the Rolling Stones in concert (this would’ve been around 1980-ish), and they didn’t get home until about 4 a.m. The boys’ English teacher called them at home to ask why they were absent from his class, and scolded them just a bit. That school demanded excellence, and I credit it for having two wonderful and successful offspring.
So interesting, I was in a Graduate non-Eng. course with an Engr. He took the best notes, and they looked like equations. So interesting, and he was such a good guy…blows are the stereotypes.
Thanks again, Toby. Miss seeing you. Good topic to contemplate the way ahead and shaping our kids.
Engineering degrees require shop time. A wise move to allow your granson to be comfortable in that environment before he gets to college.
I am a machinist so spend my work time making metal things. But I own a sewing machine and adore making furniture and actually sold pieces on commision to suppliment our income in hard times. Giving a youngster that shows promise shop time is a wonderfull gift because it will serve them well throughout their life.
Sadly, some are encouraged toward technical subjects who might be happier in other, though less lucrative fields.
E.G., my brother went into engineering despite a wish to be in architecture. He finally wound up in sales, purely for survival, with the ethic described to me;
‘Can you take something they don’t need, don’t want, and can’t afford, and shove it up their *****?’
I see that ethic at work when I see the masters of the universe lying to us to do the opposite of our best interests.
Thanks….I thought the piece was well-down…
So difficult to figure out what that is, or it was for me.
IMHO, the best way to view this is as a sequential process that begins in middle school or earlier. Aspirations, expectations, and preparation begin there. If that process is careful and attentive, your son or daughter will have developed skills, values, and predispositions that need very little direction or encouragement. You just need to be there to provide support and share their successes and failures along the way.
In the absence of that, where it may not have been possible for a variety of reasons, I think the best course is to look carefully at what skills your son or daughter has, and what he or she seems to have a passion for — and go with that. Don’t push your hopes and dreams off on them. Even so, it is very important to steer them in directions that don’t unnecessarily and arbitrarily close off future alternatives.
I always wanted most for my daughter to be happy. I always went with what she had the skills and a passion for and insisted that she pursue it to the nth degree. I always told her she could do anything a man could do. As she moved along, inevitably narrowing future options, I always made her think about the futures she was giving up when certain paths were taken: “Are you sure you want to close off that opportunity?”
I was lucky to have a great role model to point to in her mother. AND she had really great friends who had parents who were doing the same with their children.
The real challenge to our society is providing that sort of guidance and encouragement to disadvantaged youth. It is extremely important IMHO to encourage them to pursue some kind of postsecondary training or education.
ONS – you are so right – it is impossible to predict. And certainly from what I see happening in the education and training field, there is going to be a lot of pressure coming from training over the internet and other forms of ‘not in a university classroom’ education to gain credibility either through testing or some other means. So, the whole education and training thing is changing. There is a program in the UK for example, where a guy is training at risk kids in various computer languages in the hopes that they will have a skill that they can get a job with (now, we won’t discuss what this sort of thing does to the ‘value’ of a computer science degree, but..). I’m of the opinion at this point that the more we can encourage kids to learn different stuff (whether it’s working with their hands, technical things, etc.), the better prepared they will be to change and move to other things and the world changes. I’ve worked with too many people who defined themselves by what their degree was and what they did and when something changed, they ended up with no job at all. for better or worse, the world changes very quickly these days.
ONS – Part of this is this thing that I have had in my head for a long time (and putting the kids into 4H was part of that, I think) that kids need to know they have control over something. As kids, they basically have control over nothing (at least until they get their drivers licenses, anyway). I think I remember seeing the lightbulb go off for our youngest when, after his first season raising lambs for the Easter market, he stood in line and watched the buyer put what was for him a lot of money into his hands. It was a real ‘I did this’ moment and he (and his sisters as well) went on to build up quite a flock and made money. Lots of lessons in investing, saving, work, and so on from that. They had absolute proof that if they physically did something and invested their time, they were going to end up with something that was going to make them money and actually provided a lot of satisfaction also. I think that kids spend far too much time sitting in front of books or computers or the tv and never get the experience or satisfaction of actually making things that they can be proud of – doing things that they can actually hold in their hands. I think that is important.
Well said. Our youngest wants to enter sports broadcasting but has only 1 year of college and has not been enrolled for 2 years. However, he has a great job for over a year now and is on the radio as a color man for High School football (which is HUGE in Texas) every Friday night during the season. We do all we can to keep him positive and encourage him to follow his heart while keeping his nose to the grind stone.
That dedicated community was a good thing. We were located in the home of the Mercury astronaut program’s beginning, and the schools were very well staffed (to attract that very program).
Good morning Ruth.
You are so right, it is hard to figure out what is best for them so all I asked is that they get some education beyond High School.
The oldest started out Court Reporting and is now a Medical Transcriptionist.
Second daughter got a Business Degree and works in the county State’s Attorney’s office as a victim witness advocate.
Third daughter just got her Master’s this summer and works at a Jr. College as a Counselor and teaches some classes.
My reasoning to them and I guess it stuck was that sometime in their life, they were going to run into a boss or job that they did not care for and this education would give them an opportunity to walk out and go on to another job.
I would add that all three of them grew up with Big Bird and learned a lot on Sesame Street so when Romney said what he did the other night, I was really, really angry. (I decided not to swear this morning)
Teach them to lie, cheat and steal, they’re the skills all the best paying jobs require; banking, wall street, politics, etc.
Actually I’ve long thought schools should talk about how to get a good mate(and how to be one) and how to foresee problems before they happen.
For my son, taking a year off after HS and working for a living was an exceptionally good choice, and after that he took seriously making sure he stuck with and did what would give him the life he wanted.
4H is very big here in central Texas. 4H kids are, for the most part, so focused and productive. Incomperable life leasons you have so gracefully outlined. I have long admired the 4H program.
My son was really fond of Mr. Rogers and when wingnuts insisted he was gay and that our kids should be shielded from him by cutting off PBS, it made me sick.
School elections will do that job. Collecting money to choose the homecoming queen insures that the rich inherit the goodies.
I’ll swear for you;
Romney is an Asshole.
Good morning AC2
OK, guys – I’ve got to go. Everyone have a wonderful day. Carry on…
Thanks again. Have a great weekend.
I’ll weigh in even though I don’t have children. In this day and age, I’d definitely go with exposing children to the vocational and plumbing model and with things that can’t be off-shored.
My parents meant the best for me. Dad steered me to the emerging computer field because he said I get bored easily. It also worked well because I love to solve problems and have a logical mind. And it paid very well for as long as I wanted to work in the field.
The other side of the coin says I should have become a marine biologist (or some other kind of nature biologist) much as I loved being outdoors and have the patience to infinitely observe wildlife. And am not happy indoors sitting at a desk in a hierarchical situation.
Later I became a massage therapist, which is, of course, impossible to off-shore. It made me happy to help others and be hands on. These days earnings would be dependent on how your clients are faring economically.
Romney is only the latest jerk to try to cut off PBS. It has been going on with the right wing Repubs for a long time. (I know that everyone here knows what I just said) Just gotta kill anything that educates the children.
I would add that after teaching for 38 years, College is not for every child and I told my students that there are great careers in plumbing, electricians, metal fabricating, etc. just so they knew that career choices were varied and if they felt strongly about what they wanted to do, they should pursue that dream.
Thanks for the help oldnslow.
Sadly, they play to their base and that base is dedicated to keeping the less fortunate from gaining in a functioning meritocracy. imho
Exactly. They have to have those grounds keepers, maids, and butlers,nannies etc.
How would they ever get along having to do those menial chores themselves. I am not disparaging anyone who has this type of job, just trying to make a point.
The person(s) who made that killer video on Mitt and his 47% comments appeared to be part of the wait staff at that function.
I have to make a run to the store.
Have a great weekend everyone.
I’ve had a second thought about that, since thinking it originally. The staff would have been very afraid of being fired if caught.
Good morning pups, Toby.
What a timely thoughtful post, Toby. Thank you.
I adopted my stepson at age three who has struggled academically but will graduate this spring. He takes the ACT and nails a 26. His highest score was in Rhetoric. We don’t have discussions in my house. We have debates.*g*
That shows you encouraged him to stand up for himself and his own thoughts. Good for you. (Mine’s an attorney, need I say more?)
As far as not having any children of your own, I am sure there are teen mentoring programs and plenty of deserving young candidates that would be absolutely thrilled to have someone with your overall grasp of things to participate on some level. You undoubtedly would have a unique perspective and value to contribute. Yours.
Morning everyone.
I posted a blog before I read your blog that expresses the same feelings about our grandchildren. Not being a farmer, I tried to talk my chrildren out of being in four H. I lost and they won and am so glad. There isan’t a finer organization for our chrildren. I would like to know your opinion of my try and try again blog.
Hi Aunt Toby! Jumping in at 49 without reading any comments yet, I just want to say, wow, this is a great PUAC topic. One I’ve thought about so much. When people ask me, why are you in art history, and would you change paths, given the chance, I say “heating and cooling” …
4H for me, in 1964, was the gift of learning to sew. Our little chapter in Chadds Ford, PA was wonderful. I think that I stayed about 4-5 years, and damn, could I make button holes!
Either adopt or mentor some kids. They need your experience and love, you will find what they give back incredibly rewarding.
mfi
We did, of course, push our two children into academics and college, but being the first college graduate in my family, I did want them to have opportunities to survive without degrees. I think this is why we made them get jobs in high school.
Correct, and Church is the best place in the world to learn to lie with a straight face, but, unfortunately, you still need to be a sociopath for all those skills to be of much value in your career.
Now this one has me shaking my head: “Actually I’ve long thought schools should talk about how to get a good mate(and how to be one) and how to foresee problems before they happen.” What the hell kind of a school can do that?
For those of you who don’t go back to “ReddHedd’s” (Christy Hardin-Smith) occasional postings here about adopting and the rewards it brings. Most of my siblings were adopted. I continued the tradition with my own children – who seem to have turned out alright. My son Dubhaltach has three adopted children and three who he made the old-fashioned way with his wife, all six get on very well and make no distinctions between themselves as to who was adopted and who not. I’d urge you very strongly to consider either adopting, fostering, or mentoring. You’ll be amazed how rewarding it is.
mfi
Thanks, every one of us participates in bringing the kids up even if we don’t have our own.
The high cost of higher education has pushed us to conflate education with job training. They are not the same thing. Neither are kids. Some will be happier in a program focused on skills and some will benefit from a classic liberal arts education.
I posted this in response to you because you mentioned North Texas. My son started at Austin College in September
Raising kids is one of those topics that the older you get the less you know, but one thing I think I learned: Who they hang around with really matters, but even then a lot depends on genetics. My oldest (until he got three daughters of his own) seemed like a cardboard cutout of his rowdy highschool buddies, but the youngest could have been raised by chimpanzees and still have turned out fine.
@ msmolly @ #19: That’s actually another way of saying what I said above. My wife (God rest her soul) and I were Army brats. I believe the colonel’s and general’s kids dragged our whole school around with them. We never even considered not going to college, several of my buddies who were sergeant’s kids went to West Point, etc.
Yes, indeed, teach them that even to get a retail job they’ll have to bullshit about how they specially want to work for that company in many instances.
I love your idea about teaching people how to pick a good mate. Picking a bad mate has caused many of us immense unhappiness and to know to dump someone whenever they show they are a dark person, or a quarrelsome person, or a mooch, and not disposed to happiness is one of the most important life skills – but not to quibble about trivialities and annoyances and that you can have a wonderful person that’s not “just like you.”
Hope you are pleased. Their winter semesters doing studies in other countries appeal to me quite a bit. The college is a good one for several reasons.
We grew up around a crowd that assumed you would go to college so it was never a question, also. The choices kids make about companions doesn’t have to be limited to social groups, though, I hope. Knowing other walks of life can be a positive lesson, too.
“….I loved woodworking, way more than Home Ec….”
While I did take woodshop in 7th grade, more importantly, I grew up in a house full of tools and learned to use them. We had a lot of things because my father could fix other peoples cast offs. My son, who also grew up in a house full of tools is a danger to himself and others with something as innocuous as a screwdriver in his hand.
I am also the best cook in the house.
The best role model I can think of for child-raising are Milton and Betty Alice Erickson, and there is SO MUCH to read about them including by their children. (I can’t speak from personal experience, I have no children (and am not sorry about that.) They were incredibly constructive people.
Betty Alice as I recall emphasized to her children how important dreams were, but didn’t give them (what to me is crap) the spiel about how you can do anything, instead she relished the excitement one got from dreams and said that even if you couldn’t totally become part of a dream you could be excited and participate in some ways. In her own life she was enchanted by the circus, got to be in one twice as a late teenager, and later was part of a circus-boosting organization that also helped circus people.
I think job possibilities are so limited that we have to teach children to make the most of life and enjoy themselves and life regardless of whether they achieve that through paid work. We need to raise children who want to be useful and contribute and get satisfaction from that, people who find happiness in nature and life and the things they have.
I actually see many of these traits in some of today’s young people.
Erickson taught his children they could enjoy even dull jobs by making a game of them.
“Hope you are pleased.”
Extremely. When I was of college age I did not know such places existed.
Morning Ruth, and thanks so much for the topic Toby,
I am in the middle of the legal process of facilitating my child’s desire to be staying with me full time. 48% of the teens in our local school are children whose parents are divorced and are living in blended or separated families. Developing a trust, as in our children trusting each of us, is key to being a parent. Whether being supportive or being critical of your child’s choices, that they have an underlying trust in our behaviors, consistency, fairness and honesty is really all we have to offer and I think is one of our most important expressions of our love for each of them.
Here’s a quote from Erickson: “You see, we don’t know what our goals are. We learn our goals only in the process of getting there….You don’t know what the baby is going to become. Therefore, you wait and take good care of it until it becomes what it will.”
Interesting. The nearby town of Gainesville, TX, all joined together to put on a circus, learned tightrope walking, got elephants, the whole gamut. What a trip.
Having something solid and dependable is so needed. Here’s wishing you, and her, great success.
Thanks for stopping by with those thoughts.
Thanks Ruth,
Ha! Not always solid and not always dependable, but dependably predictable, I guess. Chores and further dreaming awaiting me.
Thanks for good company, all, now I have to get things done. A good day to all you chair holders.
The following came to me yesterday in an email, and as it pertains to the topic, I will add it here:
“… In first century Palestine, 3 out of every 10 Jewish children died before the age of 18 and the age was lower for non-Jews. While children were prized by parents — male children especially — in society they were largely ignored as unimportant, and vulnerable to exploitation. Then, as now, the status of children placed them at, or near, the bottom of society’s class rankings, along with others who had the lowest places in society, the poor and the oppressed, the beggars, the prostitutes and tax-collectors—the people whom Jesus often called the “little ones” or “the least”…
“…there is an expression … in Buddhism that I love: ‘One whose heart leaps out at human suffering and desires to help alleviate it’…”
These points are from a sermon on ‘servant/leadership’, but in the context of this discussion, I thought the comparison between our ‘little ones’ and ‘the least among us’ was worthy of consideration.
Julia,
You are so learned. I treasure your thought provoking posts.
Have a great day pups. I”ve got my 35th college reunion today.
Go Luther Norsemen!*g*
Thanks for that. I agree that kids don’t get any respect (by and large) which makes their lives difficult.
How much better would schools be if kids (who really KNOW the territory) got to vote in School Board and other elections)?
If we wanted people to form a lifelong habit of voting and democracy, it would start in school.
Note: Women got the franchise, in some areas, in school board elections first.
Of course if what we want is to train docile and hard-working robots with few expectations, the schools ain’t doing so bad.
Check out the National Youth Rights Association.
I’m trying to get hubby into knitting, but he sees how long it takes me to get projects done (of course I typically do fine-knitted stuff as opposed to big bulky things that knit up in less than two hours) and says “no thanks”.
My Mom had my brothers and myself knitting at about age 7. Perhaps your partner might be interested in sewing or nautical art for a slightly different purpose. I bought fabric in the form of used very lightweight sails, cut it down to a pattern, used a portable zig-zag machine to sew sails for several canoes over the years and did some traditional working of eyes and such as illustrated in this book which I have used as a reference for ages. Fashioned small wooden cleats and small tackle also. From my “male,” perspective, whatever hobby or art work I produce needs to be something eminently, “practical,” or “useful,” in my mind’s eye.
On hobbies PW (and TobyW,I saw your post on these and was inspired) I found 5 old decent scythe blades ( yard sale $2 apiece, American, not European style) re-tempered the steel edges on two different length blades and reshaped the tang so I could peen them (instructions from the library) as part of the sharpening process and adopt them for use with European style custom snaths I fashioned using illustrations found on the net.
i 2nd guess parenting decisions almost every day– gotta stop that; my mon always used to say to her 4 college degreed kids “I wish one of you had taken up a trade”