We all want things to be better for our kids than they were for us.  One of the goals of parenting is to help kids acquire the tools to not only succeed but survive in a not so kind world.  I understand the pain of watching your kids not succeed at something, or letting them bear the circumstances of their choices, praying that this proves to be a learning moment for them.  Every parent wants to provide that utopian experience for their children but as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote “Thy fate is the common fate of all, into each life some rain must fall”.  My fear is that most parents are continually holding an “umbrella” for their children and not ever allowing the rain to fall.

“Some days must be dark and dreary” is how Longfellow ends the poem.  At some point, no matter how hard we try to protect those we love, everyone will experience difficulty, sadness and disappointment in their lives.  Life happens.  People lose their jobs, experience natural disasters, divorce, get sick, die.  The list goes on,  What defines us is how we handle those situations.  We talk about the generation before me as “the greatest generation”.  Why so great?  Because they dealt with some ridiculous hardships – the Great Depression and World Wars and yet they continued to work hard and do their best for their families and for their country.  I’m not saying here that these people didn’t suffer both physically and mentally, but they found a way to make life work.

You see, as much as we would like to protect our kids, life happens.  There are bullies and test failures and car accidents and parent divorces and abuses.  Life happens.  And yes, I’m all for getting help when it is needed, but in the moment, when it’s do or die, are our kids prepared to choose do over die?  Can they get up each morning to go to school or work determined to do their best, no matter the circumstances and make logical changes when necessary?

I am a baby boomer, the child of one of those of the Greatest Generation.  He had very little patience when I whined about things being hard or unfair and for good reason considering his past.  “Life is unfair” he would say, and he was right.  As much as we would like life to be fair and everyone get their fair share, we have to remember that we’re dealing with PEOPLE here.  And people are flawed.  And not everyone thinks or believes the same way as others.  So my idea of fair and yours may be completely different.  So, as BIST would ask us (Behavioral Intervention Support Team for all of you non-educators), “Can you do your job even is someone else isn’t doing theirs?” is really a great question.  Even if you have to deal with another flawed person, can you still go on and do what you need to do or be who you have to be?

Unfortunately what we’re teaching our kids is that everything we do is for YOU right now.  You deserve everything you want, don’t let anyone get in your way and there’s always an easier way to do things.  We have failed to teach them that work is hard, results/achievement takes time and sometimes hard work is the only way to achieve what we want to in life.  And even then there are no guarantees.  There are too many variables.  Kids are leaving high school expecting college to be more of the same – teachers reminding them day after day that they need to turn things in or finish assignments.  Then when they get to college and the professor says “sorry – the syllabus says it was due now and you didn’t so now you fail”, the kid implodes.  They feel like a failure or, worse than that, they blame the professor for not letting them turn things in late.  The truth is, as teachers and parents, we didn’t let them take their falls when they were younger and teach them how to deal with them and now they’re suffering because of it.

Now I’m hearing of young teachers who are leaving the profession in droves because we as teachers, professors, parents, supervisors did not prepare them for the real world of hard work, inevitable failure and no rewards every time they follow a direction right the first time.  One such young teacher I heard about couldn’t even get out of her car one day before school,  so anxious that she couldn’t walk into the building.  No one taught this person that you just need to get up in the morning, get yourself fed, showered and dressed and work hard to do your best all day and MAYBE, one day you’ll get that promotion or that raise or that recognition you feel you need.  Otherwise, welcome to life my friend.  You either make it yours and survive or you die.  What is that old saying – you either adapt, flee or perish, right?  Right now all we’re teaching our kids to do is flee or perish.

So now we have young people who feel unsafe because of words.  I will concede that words ARE powerful and I would never tell someone to “get over” being threatened by someone.  However, if words are the only things ever used against you, consider yourself lucky.  Words can be met with words, YOUR words, words that are just a powerful.  There is no reason to be threatened by someone’s words as long as your own ideals are solid and you can articulate them.  Feeling threatened by someone because they disagree with you is weak.  The ability to participate in civil debate, even if choosing to agree to disagree makes a person powerful.  Young people need to be taught how to convey their thoughts and ideas in a clear, concise and intelligent manner.  Coming back with hatred or even worse, cowering in fear is not going to make anyone’s life better.

So, like everyone else who is reading this, I too have had some hard times – abuse, depression, two premature babies, the death of my parents, etc.  Life.  And I learned to ask for help when I needed it.  But I’m grateful to my dad for teaching me to suck it up, because sometimes that’s the only way we survive to live another day.  And another day may be all we need to make our lives better.