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These Are What Matter Most (As a Parent)

Chase Arbeiter
5 min readJun 5, 2024

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Photo by Senjuti Kundu on Unsplash

Anyone in the arena of raising children knows how scary the world appears some days.

Our times feel like they carry more challenges than ever before. With it brings more consequences than we can ever get comfortable with.

It’s hard to wrap your mind around what children today will face in the future.

A future we are responsible for preparing them for and providing them the skills to navigate through it all, largely through with their own strength.

What concerns me is the emphasis we put on building a resume. Grades. Accomplishments. Activities. Even appearances.

But our job, even on the days this seems so hard, is to prepare them to transition from amazing children to amazing adults. Grades, accomplishments, accolades, and trophies are all nice and I hope she finds some along the way. But that’s not what’s most important to me.

I’m far more focused on what author David Brooks termed, “eulogy values.” Not the resume. The qualities that people see in you and ultimately remember you by.

Perhaps what often scares me the most, is my own story. My faults, my ugly sides, my road down the wayward path that I pray she’ll never encounter.

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Chase Arbeiter
Chase Arbeiter

Written by Chase Arbeiter

I write about building a better life, chasing excellence in your craft, and using your work as a catalyst for your best life.

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