Choices in childrearing

This week’s “Rethinking” podcast from organizational psychologist Adam Grant prompted us to rethink the choices we’ve made parenting our three boys.

Adam interviewed Dr. Becky Kennedy, who is rapidly becoming the Millennial Generation’s answer to Dr. Spock, the noted pediatrician not the Vulcan science officer on “Star Trek.” She challenged the notion that parents’ job is to make their child happy. We were struck by her assertion that parents need to set boundaries and validate feelings.

We’re still processing this advice, but it got me to thinking about some of the choices we’ve made in raising our three boys. Although we’re a long way from “gettin’ them grown,” we are past the formative years when implementing Dr. Becky’s advice would have been more impactful.

Harris, Carlton and Barron Wallace sitting in front of red front doors as children. — I barely remember these days, but it was back when parenting was becoming exponentially more complex.

Former world heavyweight champion Mike Tyson once said, “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

That’s been our experience of childrearing. We had all these ideas about how we would be perfect parents and produce children with model behavior. It didn’t take long before we were off the script, improvising daily based on any number of instincts and embedded patterns that came from places in our psyches we didn’t even know existed.

Here are a few of the parenting choices we made along the way:

Prioritize church. I was in church a few weeks after I was born, and although the church is not a cure-all for behavioral ills afflicting children, Carla and I agreed that we would raise our children in church. We took seriously the commitments we made at the baby dedication services for each of our boys, reaffirming our determination to raise them “in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” That has meant showing up, even when we didn’t feel like it or when we had other commitments calling us away. It has meant praying with our boys each night before bed. It has meant participating with them in church-related activities and programs like the “God and Family” curriculum in Cub Scouts. It has meant having family worship time with scripture, music and a sermon when we’re on vacation. It meant during the COVID-19 pandemic, we worshipped in our pajamas in the living room with the service on our TV screen. We want faith to be real and to be important to our boys.

Attend preschool. Carla has made a number of sacrifices beyond the physical toll of giving birth three times. Those sacrifices include pausing her career at several points to be home with the boys. Even when she was at home, we wanted them to begin to learn how to navigate the structure of a classroom, respect the authority of teachers and engage in creative learning. We believed preschool would help them succeed at school and socialize with peers and adults. Smoke Rise Baptist Weekday School accomplished all of that and more, and we are grateful for the opportunities our boys had while attending there.

Make traditions. We believe family traditions form the glue that holds a family together, especially in difficult times. We built our Christmas holiday traditions with intentionality, making it a priority to be with family, attend Christmas Eve services, wait until Christmas morning to open presents, limit Santa’s gifts to three a piece, make time to eat out and look at lights, watch “A Christmas Story” on Christmas Eve, and to start the season, eat a big breakfast out the Saturday after Thanksgiving before going to Lowe’s to pick out our Christmas tree. Over time we developed other traditions: vacationing at Santa Rosa Beach, Florida; having an egg hunt at the house on Easter with the prized “Poppy egg” stuffed with a $10 bill in honor and memory of their grandfather; watching movies together as a family on Friday nights we’re not with the marching band at a football game; and having game nights. These traditions are cherished by us and our children, and I hope we can continue them long enough to see our boys pass them down to their families.

Support interests. Our boys have shown interest in a variety of activities over the years, and we’ve given them space to try them out. We’ve done sports: T-ball, basketball, soccer, Tae Kwon Do, tennis and swimming. We’ve done music: guitar, piano, trumpet, trombone, clarinet and chorus. We’ve done Scouts. We’ve done cooking classes and turned our kitchen into a test kitchen for experimentation and bake sales. We’ve done school extra curriculars: Readers Rally, Science Fair, morning announcement team, Student Leadership Team, marching band, jazz band, concert band, drama, Mock Trial, Model United Nations, drama, voice and dance. We have taken time off work to attend performances, breakfasts and lunches, and read to classes. We have chaperoned field trips and attended competitions, recitals, rehearsals and productions. We’ve bought T-shirts and hats emblazoned with their favorite bands, cartoon characters, slogans, NASCAR drivers and sports teams. We have tried to listen with patience as they explain the intricacies of video games, obscure historical events, marching band formations, Mock Trial closing arguments, leadership techniques and the plots of musicals. Support is a broad term, but for us it has meant chauffeuring, showing up and listening. It is about giving our boys our time and attention.

Know your grandparents. Carla and I both grew up with the opportunity to spend time with both sets of grandparents, and both of us were fortunate enough to have grandparents live in our homes for a portion of our lives. We wanted our boys to know their grandparents. That has been easier for Nanny and Poppy than for Granny and Paw Paw because of the difference in proximity, but it has remained important for us to give them time on both sides of the family. It’s important for our boys to know where they come from and what kind of environment produced their parents. There are lessons only grandparents can teach, and the love and affection of a grandparent is unmatched by any other relationship in life. It will continue to be a priority until they all have passed, hopefully many years from now. But if losing Carla’s daddy too soon has taught us anything, it taught us to treat the time we have with the grandparents as precious and never take it for granted.

We are far from perfect parents, and a number of our best laid plans have evaporated when parenting punched us in the mouth. But we have found that we hit the target closer to the bullseye when we aim with intentionality.

We’re learning parenting doesn’t end when our children go off to college. In many ways it’s just beginning. Regardless of the twists and turns, I’m grateful for this wild and wonderful journey of parenthood, and I’m thankful for the children entrusted to us to raise.

What are some of the principles you have applied in your childrearing? What did your parents do in raising you? Share your thoughts!

A case for camp

Children need summer camp. Whether it is secular or religious, one week or several, day camp or residential, children need to participate in camp.

I have no credentials to make this assertion. I am not a noted child psychologist or a Ph.D. in childhood development. I’m just a parent who has been to camp with kids. I’ve seen the advantages with my own eyes.

Kids play a parachute game — Where else but camp can kids have fun with parachutes (and not jump out of an airplane)? Photo by Rebecca Orton (http://rebeccaortonphotography.com/)

My particular preference is an overnight camp away from home, and my experience is mostly with church camp, although I have volunteered at Cub Scout day camp. For the past four years I have chaperoned the third through sixth graders from my church at PassportKIDS camp at the Clyde M. York 4-H Center in Crossville, Tenn.

Fresh off this year’s experience, here are five reasons why kids should attend summer camp, especially kids in the New South:

1. Unplugging. In this case, I mean literally. Parents have a sense that their children spend too much time in front of screens: television, computer, tablet, personal device, game system, etc. Unless it’s computer camp, kids have the opportunity to look up and see the world around them. They interact with each other, for good or bad, and learn how to relate to each other, solve problems and deal with the challenges of human relationships. They pay attention to their surroundings and notice details of the natural world that may have escaped them. They are more teachable and alert to possibilities and their potential for growth.

2. Moving. There is no better cure for summer coach potato syndrome than a good dose of camp. Kids are constantly in motion at camp, running, playing, competing, and even getting from place to place across the facility. Most of the recreational activities at PassportKIDS are creative games that don’t require athleticism. All kids need to do is commit to the activity and get in the game. Fun, not proficiency, is the goal. Sweating may produce a stinky suitcase and a cabin that could use generous quantities of Febreze, but that’s a small price to pay in exchange for burning calories and getting some exercise.

3. Cheering. Kids have nine months to use their indoor voices. At camp, they can let it all out, usually at the encouragement of hyped-up, over-zealous college students who seem to be fueled by Tony Stark’s Arc Reactor. It usually takes kids a little while to join in, but by the end of camp, the yelling and chanting and cheering have drawn out even the most extreme introverts. By selling out and rooting for each other and themselves, the kids tap into a source of self-confidence and selflessness that can cure narcissism, cynicism and several other “isms” that you don’t want your kids to have.

4. Listening. It’s nearly universal: kids at camp pay attention. When I am at home and have to get my kids to the dinner table, I have to repeat my instructions at least three times. When kids are at camp, they are more focused on what is being communicated. They hear you when you talk to them. They learn. They internalize truths so much more readily than when they are distracted by the noise and toys of home. If you don’t believe me, try being a chaperone one time. It will suddenly make you feel like the best parent ever. Kids listen at camp.

5. Being independent. This is the one point that my chaperoning may have impeded my children’s growth. When kids are at camp by themselves, they learn to get around, follow a schedule, keep up with their stuff, and generally take responsibility for themselves and each other in ways they can never do while a parent is hovering. I noticed this year at camp, rather than pick a bunk above mine or even near it, Barron picked the one at the opposite end of the room. He’s also had two summers of being at Boy Scout Camp on his own, and he’s found that he likes it. Children need to learn to make decisions for themselves, and as a parent, there is nothing more rewarding than seeing or knowing your child has made a good choice on his or her own. At camp when you’re not around, they have to make their own choices. Sure, they may come home with a fewer socks or towels, but that’s part of the learning experience, too. The next year, they’ll be more likely to keep up with their stuff.

Camp may be over for this year, but I’ve already marked my calendar for next summer. I can’t wait to go with the kids from Parkway again and see the next generation experience the wonders of camp.

What did you learn from camp? What are your fondest memories of camp? Did you have a positive or a negative experience? What do you think your kids get from their camp experiences? Leave a comment below or you can’t ride in my little red wagon…. Oompa, ooompa, oooompapa.

No more pencils, no more books

School’s out for the summer. Now what?

One thing is for sure: sitting around doing nothing is not an option.

Carlton at the park — Summer is play time.

It seems that in the New South, everyone has somewhere to go … all the time. Our schedules don’t allow for plain ol’ downtime. You remember that, right? Get-up-at-11-stay-in-your-pajamas-watch-TV-barely-move-off-the-sofa-all-day-kind-of-lazy?

Those days are gone. The way we “relax” these days is to go and do.

Our schedule this summer includes weekend getaways, swimming lessons, camps, Vacation Bible School, business travel with the family and, of course, our annual beach vacation. The dreaded “I’m bored” should not cross the lips of my children all summer. They will be busier than I ever was during my elementary school years. But maybe that’s the problem.

There’s simply too much to do these days. We have too many options.

In the push for giving our children new experiences, keeping them occupied and expanding their horizons, we fill every possible minute of their lives leaving them no time for creative play, true discovery or even just relaxation.

During the school year we go from school to homework to scouts to music lessons to church to bed. When our first two children were preschoolers, we swore we would not be that family. Now, with three kids, two of them in school, we have come to expect this kind of schedule.

But what’s more insidious is the way our summers have become just as over-programmed and jam-packed. We don’t know how to slow down or let our kids have any time to recover. We forget that less is more.

Don’t get me started on television. Television is the enemy. I get that. I don’t want my children spending their summer in front of Sponge Bob re-runs or Phineas and Ferb any more than the next parent. I also don’t want to be filling their time so that they miss out on the experience of having to come up with something to do. Some of the best play my brothers and I had growing up occurred when we had an unscheduled afternoon or even day, and we had to decide how to fill it.

To that end, I was glad to hear Carla tell the children yesterday that there will be no screen time during the day this summer. She even instituted a policy for herself. She got up early, finished her computer time before the kids came down, and didn’t look at a screen again all day. After a morning of playtime and five hours at the pool, she felt justified in letting the kids veg in front of Disney channel while she cooked dinner. At the end of the day, she called it a success.

Nothing on your to-do-list — This is an acceptable summer day agenda.

Forgive me for lecturing, but if you have children and have already mapped out an activity for every day this summer, go back and revise your plan just slightly to work in a few pajama days. And for those vacations to the beach, don’t fill every hour with extreme sports and touristy excursions.

Let your children experience something that may be one of the most important life skills you can offer them: give them some space and let them figure out how to fill the time.

And if that degenerates into Wrestlemania XXIX, time out in their rooms accomplishes the same thing.

Happy summer and y’all be safe.

How are you spending your summer? How did you spend your summer breaks from school as a child? Leave a comment below and share your plans or your strategies to balance engagement and relaxation.