A story that touched and taught me

A friend shared with me a story that both touched my heart and expanded my mind. As a father, but still a new father, I always feel like I have a lot to learn and that there should be a guide on how not to mess up my kids.

Religious people will tell you that the scriptures is exactly that and that teaching the precepts contained in them will produce great young people. I actually believe there is divine truth there, but as far as I understand I should also be treating my children with perfect love, in other words, living the teachings of the scriptures. I already know I fail to do that.

I do believe that parenting should be done mostly with gentle persuasion and long-suffering and I already know how I fall short there sometimes. So while I mull over how to produce confident, happy adults with the ability to thrive in the wide world, I talked to my friend who has more experience and has watched all his children grow beyond childhood.

His son, dubbed Student X for this exercise, was in the resource program in elementary school. That means he wasn’t keeping up with regular classwork and falling behind the pace in the already slow public school system. He was more-or-less failing to keep up or even follow fourth grade. My friend and his wife are loving and kind people with good hearts and while I didn’t know them back when this story took place, I believe they were the same then.

So, loving their son, they visited the school counselor and tried to get some help. She sat down with them, I imagine to feel them out and see who and what she was working with, and upon finding them open to helping their son, their conversation was related to me like this:

Counselor: Can I be honest with you?

Friend & Wife: Yes of course, we want to know how to help Student X!

Counselor: This kid has no self esteem.

Friend & Wife: Oh no! That is terrible.

Counselor: His self esteem is on you. This is your doing.

Friend & Wife: (Silence. Choke back emotion.)

Counselor: I don’t want you to say a word of criticism to this kid for a whole year.

Friend & Wife: Okay, we will do that.

There was more to the conversation I am sure, but that was the meat, the most salient point. Wife went home and bawled of course, as a mother who has just been told that she has destroyed her child’s self esteem will do. Friend promised Wife that he would manage that for a year.

The second part of the prescription to restoring the kid’s view of himself is that he discovered he loved basketball. His family is athletic, his sisters perhaps gifted, but he had not had good sports experiences. So, when basketball happened Friend told him after every game how well he played and they also told Student X that his eligibility for school started right then. His right to participate in the Junior Jazz basketball league was predicated on his work in the classroom.

His teacher, conveniently named Joe Educator, would have the final word about Student X’s right to participate in basketball. Friend and Wife would come home from Parent-Teacher conferences and Student X would ask, “Will Mr. Educator let me play?”

He played.

By the 8th Grade, Student X brought home a report card with nothing but ‘A’ in the grade column. For those of you completely unfamiliar, it would look something like this:

Name: Student X

Grade: A
Grade: A
Grade: A
Grade: A
Grade: A
Grade: A
Grade: A

Friend & Wife took that piece of paper to share the joy with the elementary school counselor who had the guts to eviscerate two parents to save the child. She celebrated by making a copy of the results by framing them and sticking them on her wall.

“I have never seen a child so low, rise so high,” she said.

She has used it time and again to point out to students, or more likely parents, that children, few so low as Student X, are not irredeemable.

“If Student X can do it, so can you,” she has said over and over.

Amazing what a little self-esteem can do.