Shannon and I have had a simple philosophy when it comes to Nolan and Rayna and school work:
- Give your best; sometimes that's an A, sometimes it's a passing grade
- You get out what you put in
- This is your only job, do it right
- This is your life, we aren't living it for you
Like me, Nolan was and is a dreamer. It's a beautiful thing to have vivid imagination that is capable of seeing what your future is going to be like. It is an unfortunate and frequent casualty of growing up, that the dreamer in us gets squashed by reality. I never wanted to squash that part of his being. But living through multiple lay-offs and seeing the ugliness and injustice that comes with life—it's hard not to say wake up kid and smell the coffee!
We were amazed at the layers of detail that, at five or six years old, Nolan would use to describe his future—the home or the cars or the job that he would have. He'd describe inventions or environments that he would create. Shannon and I were convinced he would become an architect or an engineer, he was so creative. The push and pull and testing of boundaries is what all of kids do to mature. Somewhere around the 6th grade Nolan's dreaming turned a tad self-centered and materialistic. I can recall a particular conversation as we drove up the drive way in our 1979 pumpkin colored Volvo with 279,000 miles on the odometer:
He gushed,
"I can't wait to get my license, I'm going to have a Porsche 911, and an Audi a4"
"Wow, those are expensive cars..."
"Yeah, I'm going to have a heated garage…"
"How are you going to pay for that?" I said, baiting the reality trap.
"Oh, I'm going to do commercials, or act on a show like Friends—they make like a million dollars a show"
"Uh huh. " I waited until we got in the house to make my move
In addition to the dreamer-gene, Nolan inherited my procrastination gene. It's in middle school that kids get their first taste of freedom. Things like—self-study math—the educational equivalent of the Le Brea tar pits for kids who believe there is always enough time to do the fun stuff first, then whip out the home-work. No sweat. Piece of cake. My mom recalls a particular Christmas break when my approach to self-study math was revealed. It was a particularly cruel, but useful teach technique to send semester grades out a day or two before the long, two-week break. For some reason my mom got home from work as the high school cafeteria manager before I did that Friday. She was ready to make her move when I walked in the door, ready for two weeks of goofing off.
"come here." This was Mom's way of inviting you to a conversation and your first clue it was too late to run
"what?" I said innocently
"Your report card came"
"Lets see, how'd I do? Miss Becker said I did pretty good on my book report", she raised it out of my reach.
"I've asked you every night for a month and you said you didn't have any math home work?" I could see dark shadows fly across the room. My mouth went dry.
"You have an F in math. I called Mr. Bennett and he said you have not turned any assignments in since Halloween." Uh oh.
Mom used a form of aversion therapy—she'd make you wish you'd never do whatever she caught you doing (or not doing) by giving you so much of whatever the vice was that you'd avoid it like the plague. It worked with cussing, smoking cigarettes and home work. At the end of Christmas break I could do multi-function equations in my head—"catching up" eight hours a day for two weeks will do that for you. I didn't miss much homework after that, but I procrastinate to this day. As a Dad, I've taken a different approach. I've tried to show Nolan and Rayna the consequences of not making the right choice. So when Nolan and I walked into the house I asked:
"So what happens of you can't be an actor on Friends?"
"I dunno,"
"Well, you better have a plan."
"Dad, I'm only in sixth grade."
"Yeah that's true, but things like your grades in math now, will affect what jobs you can have", I reasoned
"I hate math, I'm never gonna use this stuff", he echoed over the generation.
"Well, if you don't get good grades now, you won't get good grades in high school. Then you won't get in to college. Then you'll be pumping gas at the chevron." He looked back at me wondering if I was serious or joking; I had a knack for argument-ending finales.
Nothing important ever gets hashed out in single discussion. We had more, "its your life, if you want to pump gas, fine" kinds of discussions. But it wasn't long after that Nolan began going to the Saturday math sessions. At first it was to catch up on some home work that had gone undone; then it was to improve his scores. But he did it on his own. We edited papers and review math, but stopped nagging him through it. It was some time in high school when Shannon and I realized we hadn't even been editing papers any more. Nolan's grades were good, not honor roll good, but he was talking some AP courses.
He had taken his own training wheels off.
As Nolan entered University life, we were anxious to see how he would do: would he succumb to the freedom or get stressed out. He had acquired the self starting habits in high school, but would the pressure or freedom take over? As his first mid-terms and papers came back we were thrilled to see better grades than in high school even.
Now its Rayna's turn. Mr. Lopez, the same math teacher as Nolan, still holds Saturday math sessions. She attended her first Saturday session a couple weeks ago. Like her father and brother, it all started with some missed homework. Rayna is different than Nolan; she is not motivated by the same things. I'm not sure what they are yet.
One of the tricks in parenting is keeping several things going at once—too much focus on one, and the others crash. Nolan's training wheels are off and he is doing very well. Now it's time to help Rayna with her's.
No comments:
Post a Comment