Yesterday, my oldest kid, a high school junior, went to school without his completed calculus homework. I saw it on the kitchen table as I was organizing myself and his youngest brother to get out of the house to work and school. A series of thoughts familiar to all of us with school-age kids at home ensued. Yikes, what’s this? Is it important? Should I bring it to him? Nope, no way. I need to get to work. And he needs to experience the consequences of not keeping track of his business.
Yet, reader, I brought it to him. Yeah, I know. I know about the value of consequences both from my own experience and also from some wonderful parenting and education experts, Jessica Lahey among them. Wise in The Gift of Failure and elsewhere, Lahey would say to leave that calculus assignment at home and make the kid deal with it.
What is best? Should my son have suffered as a result of his negligence? Maybe. And maybe next time, that will happen. This time, I did for him as I would have wanted for myself. I am grateful to live in a world where people have my back. If I forgot something important, I would have asked my kid, or husband, or friend to bring it to me if possible. From time to time, we all mess up. Sometimes, we have to deal with the consequences. Had I a job that demanded my presence during the 15 minutes I spent stopping at his school on the way to work, I would have had to say tough luck to the kid. But I don’t. So this time, I was able to help, and so I did.
As this kid moves ever closer to college and independence, I know that I need to do less so that he can take on more, and that will sometimes require him to feel the sting of failure and missed opportunity. Chances are that soon enough, I won’t be able to bail him out, and when that happens, I’ll report back. We want our kids to be independent. We need them to be independent. But we also want and need them to be compassionate, and parents set the example for that.