You considering the church choir?

On Tuesday, I was sipping my morning coffee and watching a morning television program. The anchor was interviewing a group of I’d guess of about first graders. I wish now I’d been paying closer attention.

The anchor asked, “How many of you are good drawers?” Every student’s hand shot up. The anchor commented, “I’ll just bet you all are very good drawers.” Then, she inquired, “How many of you are good singers?” Again, every hand shot up. I thought, “Just wait a bit. We’ll take that out of you.”

“You ever consider the Church Choir?”

“Oh, who told you that you can’t sing?”

Oops. That I even had that thought gives you a hint as to the difficulty.

As parents, most are pretty good at using magnets to post a 10/10 spelling test or a child’s drawings on the refrigerator door. Make no mistake, the kiddies notice. We are proud of our children, our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren. My wife teases me, “Do you just look out there and see your genes?” The answer is yes.

Do our offspring model our behavior? Sometimes. Other times we give them examples of parenting behaviors we do not want them to duplicate. We might find the latter bothersome, but it’s true.

I don’t want to let teachers or schools or grading systems off the hook, I just don’t have either the time nor the inclination to address it right now.

How about our adult children? Do we tell them often enough that they are doing well?

At about this point I took a break to sip on a coke and watch the St. Louis Cardinals. I realized I was watching grown men play a boy’s game. They were now professionals. It hit me as critical as parenting is do we have professional parents. Oh, I know we have professional advice givers, but professional parents? I’m tempted to say the answer lies in the fizz of my coke. We do have professional educators, we require them to have a college degree, and it’s a tough task we have delegated to them. Educate my child. I could mention teacher pay and community assignment of professional status. I could, but I just said I wouldn’t. Oh, well.

Frederick Douglas famously said, “It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.” A century later Jackie Kennedy provocatively contended, “If you bungle raising your children, I don’t think whatever else you do matters much.” Does anyone really need to say, “Raising children is very important.” I do agree with a rather controversial political figure, “It takes a village.”

All mothers want their sons to grow up to be president, but they don’t want them to become politicians in the process. – John F. Kennedy

Hal McBride writes a column, Just Thinkin’, published each week.