We Can't Fight All Their Battles

The underlying theme of most my days are filled with TEACHERS who care about every single kid in their classes.

Every. Single. Kid.

As a school we assemble, feed, teach, feed, teach, disassemble 500+ children every day. If that's not a miracle in itself I don't know what is.

We care about your children and spend more time with your children than we do our own children most days. We think about them when we aren't in school, ways we can help them, ways we can make them feel success.

The media, however, paints a different picture of schools. This places fear and doubt in our hearts. We start to question our kids and what might happen to them.

I am a parent myself, it pains me when my own child comes home unhappy about the day. But, I also realize...I CAN'T FIX HER PROBLEMS. I can't go to the school and make other students play with her, or make other students say the right thing, or keep her from FAILING.

I think many parents in our generation think if our kids can go through life not feeling pain, rejection, failure, or heartache they will somehow be better than us?

Here is what I know:

I know that every time I was rejected or turned down, it lit a fire within me to try harder and be better.

When someone has made me feel inferior or ignorant, my love of learning drives me to learn more.

When I gave up on something, I started something new.

When someone tells me I'm crazy for what I do, I agree that I probably am.

I didn't have parents that researched parenting techniques on the internet. My parents were high school sweethearts with high school educations. They didn't care about my grades, if I got an ice cream, if I got a sticker, or if I made a hundred. When I got out of the car complaining that I didn't want to go to school my mom would say, "But you're so good at it!" They didn't march into the school and demand another teacher because I didn't want to go to school. Why do we feel that one bad day warrants our child a new teacher? We all have days we don't want to go to work, it doesn't mean we quit our jobs.

If we don't let our kids fail, stumble, color outside the lines, be late for class, forget a project, then what type of grown humans are we creating?

I can see it now----A 40 year old woman, has to call her mom because she forgot to do her reports for work, so her mom rushes up to turn in the work for her so she can get a paycheck?-----

Have.Fun.With.That.

I am not a perfect parent, I am far from that. I am a mistake-making, sorry-saying, well-that-back-fired-in-our-internet-researched-technique-to-get-rid-of-the-pacifier faces!

But, if there is one thing my husband and I agree on is that our children will become their own person. They will do their own projects, they will say the wrong things, they will get carried out of Walmart crying because I am not buying them a baby doll every time we go shopping. They will fail a paper and they will do their own work.

AND I will be there to PARENT, not to be a 5 year-old again.

My hope is that our parents will have an open heart to the importance of mistake-making, failure, and building GRIT in our future leaders and society.