Comments on: Failing my duties as a white parent

By: ImpostorMom » Pet Peeves

ImpostorMom » Pet Peeves — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 14:52:28 +0000

[...] Have you seen this site? It’s pretty funny. Basically a place to voice your pointless pet peeves. I find the concept pretty funny. Sort of a kin to the site Mir talked about a couple of weeks ago, Stuff White People Like but you know, the other end of the spectrum. [...]

By: Cooper

Cooper — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 23:06:32 +0000

I wouldn’t let it bother you. This blog is much more offensive to white parents:

http://stuffwhiteparentslike.com

Jeez.

By: Kris

Kris — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 21:45:27 +0000

We face the same thing – usually related to TKD or reading. She’s really a gifted child but LAZY like you mentioned. (I swear sometimes that we share children, except my younger one likes to scrub the tub adn the toilet. Imagine that.)

I told her if you did your best and “lost,” then you ahve no reason to cry. If you didn’t do your best, and lost, then you can cry, but the only reason to cry is because you didn’t try your hardest.

I never get on them about “failure” or do an “I told you so.” Failure to me is not even trying. But in those “I told you so” cases, I usually say something like “were you prepared? No? Why do you think you didn’t win?” (You know – mom guilt without the work. They already know they bombed it for themselves. It’s a no brainer.)

By: Charlise

Charlise — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 20:00:09 +0000

You know – I was thinking about this and is this the same speech that you wrote about a while ago, stating: “Chickadee has an oratorical competition this week, and they were given TONS of notice about it… by which I mean, she brought the assignment home on Friday. (Insert standard grumbling about the school here.) I sent the kids off with their dad for the weekend with instructions to please work on her speech, and she returned home on Monday with a sheet of hotel notepaper with a bunch of scribbled notes on it. Guess who stayed up late last night working on actually, you know, WRITING her speech?” – ?

By: Kathy

Kathy — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 14:38:41 +0000

Good luck to all of you!. It took me until my son was in college until I placed the responsibility for laziness where it belonged – on him. As a teacher myself, I had nagged and dragged him through elementary and high school. He almost always got lower grades due to lack of homework, which was always a surprise to me, since I had forced him to do it (his twin brother usually had the same assignments or I made him call a friend for the information). However, the work never made it to the teachers! We even had a summer school stint for advanced algebra to get an acceptable test grade, which was great once he had motivation – at least for 6 weeks! After the first year of college with no credits earned, I withdrew the funding until he paid and earned credits. The good news is at 28 he is finally almost finished with a bachelor’s degree in English and philosophy due to his own timing and commitment. My other two kids (the twin and a daughter)also had some lazy issues as well or at least the “I can do it without much effort” attitude. After a while I realized that learning to fail, recover and go on was one of the most important lessons they each could learn. Resilience is the best skill. It was good when they found things that weren’t inherently easy for them, so that they could learn that everyone fails at times. I will take some of the blame because as a recovering perfectionist I may have given them the false notion as kids that they could do anything! Now I get to watch my gifted grandkids behave the same way with their parents and I just smile and tell them that it is God’s special plan for them to experience the other side of the coin! It’s hard to see the big picture when you are in the middle of it,so just remember that kids need to have all kinds of experiences, both good and bad, in order to grow up and cope in our world. Love the blog! You have a good perspective – laughing at ourselves keeps us honest.

By: allysha

allysha — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 02:59:49 +0000

There is a ‘parenting philosophy’ out there that I agree with- It’s this: when your kids are young, give them space and opportunity to fail so they can learn from the lesson when it won’t ruin their life. Not that you set them up for disaster. You just make them responsible for things (like getting their homework together!) and if they don’t follow through, then they suffer the consequences. We all have to have those experiences sometime! Better now than later when they lose a job or something.

My daughter is super competitive, too. And when there is something extra she wants to work on, I tell her I’ll support her, but she has to be the one who reminds us to work on it, because it’s her thing.

You’re a good mom.

By: Katherine

Katherine — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 01:42:57 +0000

My older son sounds a lot like Chickadee – very bright and very lazy. and disorganized too. When I went to shower this morning, I told him to get dressed, pack his backpack and brush his teeth while I was in the shower. I came out and only the dressed part was done. He called home while I was out asking me to bring his math book. Nope, I didn’t get back home until after his class was over.

I have brought things to him at school before, but I charge for the privilege. With the price of gas and trying to discourage this, I think its time to up the ante – either the once per year or more money/chore time.

I keep warning him that some day he will need to study. Not yet – middle school seems to be easier than elementary for him, even though he has 4 gifted classes.

By: Jen

Jen — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 21:45:19 +0000

Tell Chickadee that when you’re 15 and don’t know how to study or do REAL work, it SUCKS!!! I live with one of those “gifted” kids who doesn’t know how to try to do anything because everything came easily…..until this year. Now, she is barely treading water. And, I am SOOOO not patient with her because I was one of those kids who divided my test studies up into 5 equal parts for the five nights before the test. Drives me nuts! But I think you are doing the right thing. We have decided to give our dear gifted child enough rope to hang yourself. I already passed 10th grade–not about to do it again for her! Sometimes ya just have to learn the hard way.

By: Lori

Lori — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 17:34:18 +0000

Oh god, you just described my childhood. I was your kid. Smart, somewhat competitive, lazy as hell (for exactly the reason you mention: that I did well without effort most of the time, so why work?). I’m ashamed of myself now.

By: StephLove

StephLove — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 14:34:59 +0000

I think that site is funny, mostly, with an occasional sour note.

Gosh, am I white, though. I have a Phd in Comparative Literature AND an M.F.A. (See #81).

I think the site is misnamed, though. It’s really about middle and upper-class, liberal whites but that doesn’t have the same ring to it, does it?