This is a great reminder to be honest and authentic not only with our kids, but with everyone in our lives. Practicing authenticity is more important now than ever, not only because of we live in an era when everyone gets a trophy but because our social media culture, especially for adolescent girls, is all about curating an online image which is often more artificial than not. I hope you will continue to share your thoughts on parenting. Thanks, Mike.
Hey, Resha. Great point about the artificial life of social media (especially with girls). That can be a tough point to get across when all of a kid's peers are engaging in that fake presentation. I wonder whether parents being honest with their kids helps the kids develop better bullshit detectors with their peers. That would be an interesting study!
Your son's disillusionment with too-easy tae kwon do resonates with me. At my first part-time, small-town newspaper job, my work rarely got edited beyond spelling corrections. I didn't realize how much work my writing needed (in terms of structure and flair) until I struggled to find a full-time job upon graduating from college. Luckily, I landed a role at a daily paper with an editor who was willing to tear my writing apart and make me piece it back together.
Also, it sounds like your son and mine have a ton in common. Mine was not excited when we signed up up for karate and that ended pretty quickly, but he's all the time making video games, drawing comic books, or making Lego inventions. It's good stuff!
I love that newspaper story. I had a similar experience in grad school. My advisor had a reputation of making students re-write everything several times. While it sometimes felt frustrating in the moment I really respected that she took me so seriously and had the same high bar for me as everyone else. I wouldn’t have really known how much work I needed without that. It made me work harder to get better. I really appreciate her for that.
Really nice piece. I often feel torn about this stuff. My kids do Brazillian Jiu Jitsu (I do too), and one thing I like about it is that there's so much sparring that it's hard for them to have too unrealistic a sense of their abilities. But still, one of my kids was saying the other day that he thinks one of his regular training partners is "a bit better than me, but not much" or something to that effect. This other kid strikes me as extremely athletically talented, in a way that my son is not. He wins almost every exchange they have. They're not in the same league. Do I smile and nod, or deliver the harsh truth? I went with something in the middle, to the effect of: "he's really good, and he comes to train more often than we do" but without making the comparison explicit.
Also, as an aside, another thing I like that Brazillian Jiu Jitsu does is have a separate belt system for kids. So you have kids getting frequent promotions, but without that leading to 12 year old black belts who could pose no threat to an untrained adult.
That middle way makes a lot of sense. It’s not lying and also doesn’t crush him. I make similar statements to Sam where I place the emphasis on the other kid’s effort and dedication. But he’s also pretty quick to acknowledge when someone is better than him at something. He generally seems to admire people with high mastery of things. Re BJJ, I took him for a trial class around the same time that he was exploring taekwondo. He wasn’t feeling BJJ—I think because the physicality of it felt like too much for him. But I really like it for the reasons you mentioned. You get much more of a true test of your ability and they have different belt systems for kids. I’ve considered it for myself several times. Can you email me where you go?
This is a great reminder to be honest and authentic not only with our kids, but with everyone in our lives. Practicing authenticity is more important now than ever, not only because of we live in an era when everyone gets a trophy but because our social media culture, especially for adolescent girls, is all about curating an online image which is often more artificial than not. I hope you will continue to share your thoughts on parenting. Thanks, Mike.
Hey, Resha. Great point about the artificial life of social media (especially with girls). That can be a tough point to get across when all of a kid's peers are engaging in that fake presentation. I wonder whether parents being honest with their kids helps the kids develop better bullshit detectors with their peers. That would be an interesting study!
Your son's disillusionment with too-easy tae kwon do resonates with me. At my first part-time, small-town newspaper job, my work rarely got edited beyond spelling corrections. I didn't realize how much work my writing needed (in terms of structure and flair) until I struggled to find a full-time job upon graduating from college. Luckily, I landed a role at a daily paper with an editor who was willing to tear my writing apart and make me piece it back together.
Also, it sounds like your son and mine have a ton in common. Mine was not excited when we signed up up for karate and that ended pretty quickly, but he's all the time making video games, drawing comic books, or making Lego inventions. It's good stuff!
I love that newspaper story. I had a similar experience in grad school. My advisor had a reputation of making students re-write everything several times. While it sometimes felt frustrating in the moment I really respected that she took me so seriously and had the same high bar for me as everyone else. I wouldn’t have really known how much work I needed without that. It made me work harder to get better. I really appreciate her for that.
Funny how similar our kids are!
Really nice piece. I often feel torn about this stuff. My kids do Brazillian Jiu Jitsu (I do too), and one thing I like about it is that there's so much sparring that it's hard for them to have too unrealistic a sense of their abilities. But still, one of my kids was saying the other day that he thinks one of his regular training partners is "a bit better than me, but not much" or something to that effect. This other kid strikes me as extremely athletically talented, in a way that my son is not. He wins almost every exchange they have. They're not in the same league. Do I smile and nod, or deliver the harsh truth? I went with something in the middle, to the effect of: "he's really good, and he comes to train more often than we do" but without making the comparison explicit.
Also, as an aside, another thing I like that Brazillian Jiu Jitsu does is have a separate belt system for kids. So you have kids getting frequent promotions, but without that leading to 12 year old black belts who could pose no threat to an untrained adult.
That middle way makes a lot of sense. It’s not lying and also doesn’t crush him. I make similar statements to Sam where I place the emphasis on the other kid’s effort and dedication. But he’s also pretty quick to acknowledge when someone is better than him at something. He generally seems to admire people with high mastery of things. Re BJJ, I took him for a trial class around the same time that he was exploring taekwondo. He wasn’t feeling BJJ—I think because the physicality of it felt like too much for him. But I really like it for the reasons you mentioned. You get much more of a true test of your ability and they have different belt systems for kids. I’ve considered it for myself several times. Can you email me where you go?