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Parents, you can't put a price tag on true success
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Published: December 4, 2008
Recently, I read about a couple whose son was unable to earn a position as a starting quarterback on his high school football team. Heaven forbid!
Mom and Dad clearly couldn't have Junior relegated to second string. He might not become a professional athlete and then, of course, his self-esteem would suffer and his life would be meaningless and he would wander forever in an existential fog.
So, Mom and Dad rented out their $2.8 million home and spent over $730,000 on a second home in a different school district so their son could play for a team with less competition at quarterback. Not to find a better coach, mind you, or a team with a better record, but to find a place with less competition.
In her outstanding book "Conceiving Parenthood," Duke University theological ethics professor Amy Hall talks about the enormous, damaging pressure mothers feel to produce and rear children who meet societal expectations of perfection and to "find the optimal preschool, elementary teacher and gifted program; the pressure, in sum, to give birth to and then form a child who will cohere to the expectations of her family, friends and neighbors."
Sadly, this seems yet another example of a family succumbing to that pressure. I don't have happy thoughts about the implications for that boy's long-term emotional fitness, but we can only hope he outgrows the foolish maneuvering of his parents.
In this case, however, it isn't the mother who apparently feels, or is creating, this pressure. The father is apparently the main driving force behind this decision. I don't doubt these folks love their children, but somewhere in their brains, there has been a synaptic misfire of mammoth proportions. Success can be bought and money is the solution to all problems. And we wonder why our country is in such trouble.
Some assistance for our children is acceptable. If a child is struggling in school, we may hire a tutor.
But imagine the outcry if a salutatorian changed schools solely so he or she could be valedictorian?
With our oldest daughter, we once paid for several private softball lessons. No problem there. She got extra attention and then still had to succeed or fail on her own. No one was so misguided as to purchase her a starting position.
I want my children to learn that they are priceless regardless of their successes or failures. Sometimes you don't get to do what you want to do, and trying to buy your way to "success" cheapens that success. As my old judo sensei used to tell me, there is always someone better than you, so don't get cocky.
I want my children to succeed, but for them to be wise and well-adjusted adults, they need to learn that coming in second — and how you respond to it — is a fundamental part of life.
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