What two things always go together? I mean two things where one predicts the other? Orange juice and sunshine are connected in my mind. But I have certainly enjoyed a citrus drink on a cloudy day just as I have gone for a sweaty walk without any Florida-centric beverages. Love and marriage may go together like a horse and carriage, but you and I both know loveless unions as well as unencumbered quadrupeds.
How about brains and money? And a related query, do smart kids always do well in school? Again, nah. We all know of a high school valedictorian who flunked out of college. Do dumb kids always end up drinking wine in the gutter living in a trailer constructed from cardboard and broken dreams? Of course not. Some of the most successful folks we know can’t tell the difference between a semi colon and a right triangle but have wicked business savvy and earn oodles of samoleans.
Plus which the list of folks who never went to or didn’t finish college is replete with successful tech entrepreneurs. Famously, Bill Gates who dropped out of Havard University, Steve Jobs who left Reed College, and Michael Dell who didn’t finish at the University of Texas. Oprah Winfrey was one class short of her degree from Tennessee State University, Brad Pitt was in his last semester at the University of Missouri. Both dropped out before finishing. Last I heard both Oprah and Brad were doing okay for themselves.
So why do so many parents in these troubled times focus on where their kids matriculate rather than what actual skills and abilities their kids possess? A wallaby enrolled at Stanford would still be more interested in eating ferns than learning about Aristotle. Although to be fair I have no insight into how marsupials would perform in the classroom at Duke.
Long time readers may be disappointed—“disgruntled” and “ennui” being more difficult to spell—that I continually return to this familiar theme. But consider how much pressure parents can be relieved of by accepting this straight-forward fact. You don’t have to worry about what’s on your child’s transcript if you focus instead on what’s in your child’s head. You don’t have to compete for highly rejective colleges if your child knows how to pose, research, solve, and explain sophisticated questions.
Why do I keep hammering away at this self-evident truth that has been proven repeatedly over my 40 years of professional practice. Because—hard to believe, but sadly accurate—not everyone is as thoughtful as you and reads my essay every week. So I’m during my small part to make parenting easier in these troubling times, take some pressure off the rancid and needlessly competitive transition process. All good people everywhere try to help out when they can. We donate blood, stop for stranded motorists, connect with a bereaved friend, contribute to the Against Malaria Foundation, With rare exceptions, we comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable*; we stand up against separating mothers from their infant children, we speak out against injustice, even injustice in uniform.
Hey, wait a minute! Maybe there are two things that go together after all: doing what’s right and being a good parent. Any here’s another one: not stressing your kids about where they go to college and having emotionally healthy children.
* “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable” is attributed to Martin Luther King but actually precedes him by almost a century and was coined by Peter Dunne.
