Thoughts about Kids and Education...
My wife and my small group is going through studying a DVD by Andy Stanley, a brilliant speaker and author from Atlanta called Parental Guidance Required. It's about parenting.
Most people, Stanley said, think that they can parent automatically. They use - as evidence of their expertise - the fact that they were once children. They use the line, "Hey. I was a kid once."
This is like saying, "I've had surgery. I'm sure it's not that hard to operate."
I thought that was pretty funny. Anyway, the first activity that they have you do is go through and list all the experiences that you had growing up, up until junior high. Every activity, every thing you did. Around the group, this was pretty standard. Piano lessons. Soccer. Gynmastics. Ballet. And that was just me.
Haha.
Stanley's point is that activities in a kid's life don't matter nearly as much as relationships. His contention is that as a culture, we are producing experience-rich, relationally-poor kids. The kids are running all over God's earth, doing 100 million things but the family never has dinner together. Or game night. Or camping trips.
This struck me as true. I teach high school, and my kids are just famished for relational time with me. I think it's largely because of the poverty of experience they've had with cool, caring adults.
Stanley went on to say that as a pastor and counselor, he has heard a lot of things but he has never heard anyone say:
"The reason why my life is falling apart is because I didn't get into the college of my choice."
Or
"My life is in shambles because I was forced to go to a sub-par public school."
or
"If only I'd made the travelling team for 7-9 year olds."
Stanley contends that the thing that really matters the most in life is the ability to develop and cultivate close adult friendships. And that many of the things that parents are so intent on getting their kids to do don't help to that end AT ALL.
Now, I don't know anything. I have a 7-month old, so I haven't really begun parenting. But this sounded like good advice. Anybody wiser want to chime in?
posted by David Tieche at 4:36 PM
1 Comments:
Clearly Andy Stanley is trying to compensate for the fact that he wasn’t involved in any of these fun activities when he was a child. And since he missed the boat on piano lessons, sewing club and the traveling football team he is trying to force that agenda on us also.
Seriously though, I’ve only been at this for 3 years now myself but this sounds sensible to me. If nothing else, all the constant driving and traveling to shuttle kids around seems like a sure-fire way to put incredible stress on your marriage. And for what end?
There’s a new book out called “Home Court Advantage” by this guy Kevin leman. I heard him on the radio the other day and from I could tell he's on the same page with Stanley. For one thing he said that kids should only be involved in 1 activity per semester. Which is strangely a pretty radical idea for most parents.
But think about it. Parents want to be the primary influence in their kids lives, but how can they do that when they spend the least amount of time with their kids?
Of course, reality is always the big foil to whatever I ever say about being a dad, since I constantly struggle at home between trying to accomplish my goals and to-dos for the day and spending time just hanging with my kids. There are many times when I have to consciously, metaphorically, slap myself across the face and tell myself to actually look at my daughter in the eyes and ENGAGE with her in whatever game we are playing instead of just going through motions while thinking about something else, or trying to do something else. Otherwise what am I teaching her? How to fake relationships? I don't want to do that. But man, it is tough. And my face is metaphorically sore from all the metaphorical face-slapping I keep doing to myself. )
Anyways, back to Dr. Leman. The other thing he said which I though was interesting was that since we have all bought into the rat-race of filling our lives to overflowing with activities, we feel that we need to indoctrinate our kids into the same rat-race from an early age. So, maybe there is a lesson in here for parents too, about slowing down and taking more time to develop relationships with other adults?
As for the kids, ee already experience this peer-pressure with our 2 (almost 3) year-old. She is "only" involved in one class right now, that meets for 1 hour, once per week. It's a creative dance and art class thing and she loves it. But most other kids in that class have multiple activities planned out for the entire week. And there is constant, subtle pressure from other parents to get our daughter more involved, as if we are somehow depriving her and stunting her growth potential.
To which I say "poppycock".
I wish we could do this parenting small group with you guys. It sounds great.
12:57 PM
Post a Comment
<< Home