Member-only story
These Are What Matter Most (As a Parent)
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.
Isn’t that what we all fear to some degree?
That your children will inevitably learn these hard life lessons as hard as we did. Or worse.
I ran across an ancient Greek poem recently, from the play Suppliant Women, that provided me with some hope:
“To be well brought up develops self-respect:
Anyone who has practiced what is good
Is ashamed to turn out badly…”
“Is teachable. Even a child is taught
To say and hear what he does not understand;
Things understood are kept in mind till age.
So, in like manner, train your child well.”
Euripides
I love that.
Because, after all, all we can do is do our very best to be there for them, teach them along the way, guide them when they need counsel, and show them by example the very best we can.
