I know for certain you would’ve handled all of it way better than I. And yet, I’m grateful for the experience and for what I’ve learned. It’s just that I’d already learned it. Maybe you’re like me and sometimes make the same mistake more than once. With hopes of someone benefitting from yet another blunder, I’ll gladly share what’s been going on.
I’ve admitted it here before. No surprise to anyone who knows us, we’re kind of hands-off as far as parenting goes. We don’t have anything like piano practice schedules or reading charts. Or even bed times. We let them govern themselves as much as we can. But for some reason, we’ve been on our senior the past few months to fill out job and scholarship applications. We realized, after we got his ACT score, that he had some potential we thought he should capitalize on. In a million different ways and settings, we’ve tried to encourage him to take advantage of his GPA and experiences to apply for both local and national scholarships. And yet, because we’re typically hands-off, we sat back and let him take the lead for the first few months. Until we realized nothing was happening. Deadlines loomed. Some had passed. That’s when we got involved and became insistent. We asked him about his applications, if he’d acquired his letters of recommendation and transcripts, if he’d talked to his counselor. We showed him the ones we knew about. We reminded him of the major ones whose deadlines were close.
We thought we’d reached him when he realized the paycheck he’d just received for a month’s worth of work was a mere 15% of the scholarship he was applying for. For an hour’s work. But even that discovery didn’t really change anything. He simply finished filing out that application and moved on with his night. This “encouragement” continued for several weeks. Until last Friday.
I finally went down in his room that afternoon, I sat on his bed, and we just talked. He’d used the analogy with me before. “You know how much you hate coding, mom? That’s how I feel about all those little boxes and questions.” I already knew that. I just can’t imagine anyone not loving the question-answer exercise, especially when the answers are all ones you know! But I could totally relate to what he was saying because I’d had to take some computer classes in college. I put the coding one off until the last summer session I possibly could. I hated that class; I dreaded going. Nothing gave me more stress or discomfort that summer than that dumb class. I felt my son’s pain. I knew exactly what he was talking about. He likes coding like I like filling in little bubbles on questionnaires. I like coding like he likes filling in bubbles. I could definitely feel where he was coming from.
But it wasn’t until he shared the reason he’d been staying late at school the past week that I got it. I thought he just liked working on his robot, but it was more to avoid hearing us harping about scholarships. At that moment I knew that we’d been going about it all wrong. Not that we don’t have a point. It kills us to think of him wasting opportunities like these. He could get paid to go to school. We feel like he’s getting a free ride on us. We feel like Todd’s out there working all day, all week to provide for a family of seven while he sits in his room after school building models and watching funny shows on Netflix on his little machine. Todd’s of course been more upset about this than me since he’s the one out there earning the money. He feels like our son has no skin in the game, that he’s just flitting along, not pulling his weight. Todd explained to him that his “lack of enthusiasm” affects the whole family because next year when he’s in college, we will have that extra expense that will take away from the family budget. If he worked just a little bit every day on scholarships, he could potentially lighten the load for the whole family. I see Todd’s side clearly.
And yet, it hit me the minute our son told me why he’d been staying late. Our relationship had had no room for fun and giggles lately. It wasn’t that it was bad, it had just been better. I knew that we needed to stop right then and let it all go.
I was out. No more scholarship talk from that minute on. I promised I wouldn’t mention them ever again. But I also told him I was going to think about all of this. Because it still didn’t sit well with me that my husband was out working to earn money for him to go to school while he just sat in his room entertaining himself.
Saturday we talked again. We are all for natural consequences, preferring to let real life fill in as teacher; that’s always been our philosophy and our go-to. We’ll pay for his tuition the first year (just like we did with our older son), and if he has to work his entire way through school, then that’s just life. If he has to take out loans (the lecture we’ve given sooooo many times), that’s life. We’ve parented with natural consequences so many times, I don’t know why it was so hard in this instance. I think because the stakes were high this time. It affected us. But even so, we decided to finally give the responsibility to its proper owner.
I explained that we needed to compromise a bit though. I understand why he feels they’re a waste of time because we’ve talked about it a lot. (Most are based on need, ethnicity, leadership, athletics. While he is somewhat well-rounded and fairly smart, he is a very average, white, middle-class male. I hate wasting resources like time; I get where he’s coming from.) But I told him it just didn’t seem fair for him to be playing all afternoon while Todd was working for his future. He made a lofty goal to read the stack of classics in his room earlier this year. I told him that would be a fine stand-in for scholarship work while he’s waiting to hear back from the job he applied for. I think we’ve made a deal.
This all feels very familiar. I knew I’d been here before. Last spring all that was left between him and his Eagle award was his project. We encouraged, we helped him with ideas, we touted all the reasons he should finish up rather than give up. But we’d held our ground. We refused to do any of the work—just as we refused to do part of any application for college or jobs or scholarships—although I did “remind” him about it often. But that summer, it clicked that I needed to let it go. The relationship was more important. In both instances, it’s not about the award or even the money, now that I really think about it. It was that I knew he’d have regrets that could’ve been avoided if only he’d taken our advice.
And then I thought how silly that sounded. Who doesn’t grow up without regrets? Our parents all lectured tirelessly to help us avoid having them; but we insisted on doing it our own way. And aren’t we grateful? Even though later we realize they’d been right, I’d rather own my regrets than do without the valuable lessons that accompanied them. I’d rather have my kids learn a lesson than earn a scholarship or award. I’d rather have a close, non-contentious relationship these last few months with my son than have his name listed by every scholarship on the graduation program. He may end up paying his schooling off years later like we did. He may end up taking longer to graduate because he’ll have to work. He may never get his Eagle (even though he did the project six months ago and simply has to turn in the paperwork). He may never touch the pile of applications on the printer that’s now collecting dust. But I’m ok with it. I’m grateful for the warm and loving relationship we have with him. I’m grateful for the lessons he’s helping us learn. I'm grateful for the chance to make things better. This may not be how you'd handle it, maybe you think we're weak for not holding our ground, and maybe you think we're doing it all wrong. But I have enough experience to know when it feels right for our family. It's when I feel the relationship is secure. It's when I feel him exhale. And when I do the same. In all I've learned and experienced as a parent, I can tell you this peace of mind and heart trumps any award or scholarship.
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