Parental Involvement

This afternoon I was watching my son Hunter crush the baseball at batting practice. As I watched him, I was amazed at how much he has grown up and how mature he is becoming. Besides being very athletically gifted, at 14, he practices being a gentleman and genuinely works on using good manners and being the type of person that makes a Dad proud. Don’t get me wrong, he can still be a big-time goofball. He is 14 after all. But as I sat watching Hunter I began thinking about all the times this boy made me laugh. And aside from swelling with pride when he holds the door open for others and is the first to jump up and offer to help, his ability to make me laugh has been one of my life’s great blessings. As I was watching him at practice I became nostalgic and remembered this:

I sat with a high level administrator of a state agency recently and listened to her explain why she thinks we are losing the battle for so many of our kids’ futures. She truly lamented the fact that a large Midwest city that is under her purview from a service standpoint was dramatically affected by a large group of young parents and kids who have grown in an environment where little is expected and so little is realized. She talked about how 26-year-old moms have 12-year-old daughters and they both live with the 42-year-old grandmother. She talked about this cycle of kids having kids and parenting being abdicated to the system, or worse, to the streets.

It is easy to write about the people who are neglectful parents. You know who they are. In my former company I had two psychiatric and psychosocial clinics that served children, and I used to walk into those clinics and think to myself, “What spawned these hellions?” Then I met their mom and dad and I understood. It is true that kids from bad homes and kids from broken homes have a much harder road than kids from homes with two loving parents… But do two loving parents guarantee good parenting?

Sylvia and I were married for 9 years before we had our first child. Megan was the answer to many of our prayers. She came into this world as the most absolutely beautiful baby ever born and soon became the smartest and quickest and friendliest child that ever lived. Trust me on this one – it’s all true. Once she started school she became the light of her teacher’s eye and the best friend to the kids in her class. She excelled in all subjects and with all people. She is truly that remarkable and beautiful and darn near as close to perfect as young lady can be. It seems that only yesterday I watched in absolute awe as Megan came into my world and nothing had been the same for me sense. My little girl quickly became the focal point of my world and when her brother and little sister came along I knew that there truly was a much higher purpose than me. These precious little souls are the greatest gift ever given. And my Megan started this incredible journey for me. It is a journey that gets better every day.