Kids watch parents out of the corner of one eye. I remember that time vividly. Kids are focused on their own business, a business that comes from within and is the resultant of many forces, interior and exterior. They grow up badly in need of an air traffic controller, because there is just too much for them to worry about, impulses from within, and pressures from without. When they say “Mom! No!” or complain, “Oh, Dad,” it is usually not because parents are wrong, or even that they think they are wrong, it is because the parental imposition is just one more thing too many. This extra, additional variable that our parents are laying on kids threatens to throw them off course, a course they would rather not have to correct. Looking back, I can put a grown perspective and a voice to my frustrated thoughts about it at the time: “It’s nice to have a parent in the conning tower, but she doesn’t seem to realize what’s involved in flying this damned crate. She just has no idea of the pressures I am under!” Sigh!
Last Month’s column: Do Boys and Girls Learn Differently?
From the Principal’s Office: Lessons on Learning, Life, and Parenting is published bi-monthly. Each column is written by Rick Ackerly, a distinguished educator with thirty years experience in middle and elementary school education, who is currently the Head of the Children’s Day School in San Francisco.
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