Address

Perhaps the scariest thing about raising children is that nine times out of ten they will basically follow your lead.  For example, a couple weeks ago my three-year-old said he had to go potty.  Generally this consists of him sitting on the toilet for an unnecessarily long time, scratching his belly and saying things like “Just gonna’ sit here and ‘lax.”  On this particular evening, however, he did not want to sit and ‘lax’ and instead wanted to stand up and go “like a big boy.”  Generally this consists of him standing on a step stool entirely naked, sticking his mid-section out like he’s fishing, and then going on the toilet seat.  This evening was no exception, and so I did what I assume any normal adult would do in that situation. I grabbed a quick dash of toilet paper, soaked up the mess, and then tossed it into the bowel. 

Mess gone, right?  Sure.  But now he needed to sit and finish what he’d started, so he turned and took a seat.  I left the room, and when I returned less than a minute later he had absolutely followed my lead by almost filling the bowel with wadded up balls of toilet paper.

“What are you doing?”  I asked, “You’re gonna’ clog up the toilet!”

He pouted and put his head down.  “Just tryin’ to clean.”

So I felt bad.  I owed him an apology.  We all went to bed for the evening, but I decided that the next day I would “pay him back” by doing something special.  It was too wet to play at the park, so I offered him what I thought was the next best thing:  a Happy Meal at McDonalds.  I had a coupon, plus I’m just as addicted to terrible fast food as the next guy, so we went to the restaurant and ordered.  Based on my initial reasoning, he will grow up and reward his own children with artery-clogging fast food.  I am a bad person.

Sometimes I think that instead of expecting kids to follow our examples, which are typically dubious at best and often just downright stupid, we should pick out some of their better behaviors and follow suit.  We should follow the lead of EJHS seventh grader Colby Heaton, for example, who earned some well-deserved media attention lately when he and some of his friends initiated a fundraiser on their own time to finance the purchase of new geography materials.  In case you haven’t heard about Colby’s efforts, he was concerned about some slightly outdated atlases being used in his classroom.  Many of us in such a situation would have reacted in one of two common ways.  We would complain about the lack of funding and perhaps even use it as a crutch to justify poor academic effort on our part, or we would simply accept that the maps were outdated, swallow the status quo, and move on with our lives.

Colby, though, accepted neither of those options.  He, along with some friends, actually took it upon themselves to design, create, and then sell bookmarks in order to generate the needed funds, which were presented a few weeks ago to EJHS geography teacher Angela Denoyer.

Did they make much money?  Of course not.  They were selling bookmarks to a group of mostly unemployed adolescents.  They did, however, solve a problem.  Perhaps more importantly, they gave lie to the misconception that our young people are inherently lazy and unmotivated.  They proved that people, even young people, can effect positive change in not only their own lives but other lives as well.

On a much larger and more heart-wrenching scale, we also could learn a tremendous lesson about courage from the nearly 300 Nigerian girls kidnapped from their school last month.  As girls attending school in an area of Nigeria prone to violence, they and their parents knew they were targets for Boko Harem, the Islamist terrorist group.  They knew, each morning when they walked to school, that they were taking a risk just for doing what most of us take for granted:  getting an education.  Despite these risks, they walked on.

Of course, we do not know how their story will end.  We do know, however, that their story proves once again that courage is not an attribute bestowed only upon adults.  As Colby and his friends have reminded us, resourcefulness is a virtue that our youth often display in droves.

As another graduation season comes to an end, those of us who ended our schooling long ago are often tempted to address our youth with sage advice garnered over decades of living, which is often a good idea.  Occasionally, though, I think they’d be better off if we “grown-ups” just stepped out of their way and let them clean.