Your Kid’s Not Perfect. Neither Is Mine.

I always thought it was a normal part of parenting to realize full on what all of our kids’ strengths and weaknesses are. That along with the good, would come some bad.  That depending on the day, it could be all good….or seven circles of hell bad.

I mean, I see all of us parents walking around with our absolute looks of despair, exhaustion, and bewilderment. We can hide it pretty well most of the time, but on some days the school drop off line looks like an open casting call for The Walking Dead.  This can’t be because our precious children are always amazing, right?

I’ve been well aware of my kids’ talents as well as their character defects from early on, and have never been one to make excuses for the latter. Yes, one of my kids is a lot easier than the other. One has given me far less struggles, and gray hairs, but neither of them is perfect.

Why should they be? I’m not. You’re not. No one is.  Yet I keep hearing from educator friends how they are coming up against more and more parents who are completely blinded to the fact that their kid(s) might not be perfect….and this is an issue that looks to be on the rise.

Seems to be becoming the norm for parents to complain to the teacher or even the school Superintendent when little Johnny doesn’t get an A on his book report.  It’s not possible that Johnny didn’t do well!  Not possible that perhaps he wasn’t paying attention in class and didn’t write down all of the necessary instructions? Oh no.

Maybe it was Davey’s fault that sits next to him and distracted him, and how dare the teacher allow that to happen! Maybe it’s the teacher’s fault for not making sure every single one of her 30 students had a personal one on one conversation about what was expected. I mean come on. What is wrong with this picture?  

It’s no small wonder teachers count down the days until summer vacation. It’s not so much the stress of teaching a classroom full of kids anymore….it’s also the stress of dealing with difficult parents.

All of a sudden, instead of kids getting in trouble and being reprimanded by their parents for getting bad grades, the teachers are the ones being scolded.  I hear this from every single educator I know.  As a matter of fact, I have been thanked profusely by my son’s teachers  when they realize that I am on their side any time I’ve been called in to discuss my son’s behavior or grades.   They are genuinely surprised that I don’t walk in ready to litigate.  

My son is a bright kid, and incredibly creative….but he also tends towards being a little too social in school.  If he gets a bad grade because he was being more Perez Hilton than Stephen Hawking in class….then so be it.  If your nose is into updating everyone on the latest Battle Royale rather than stuck in a book where it belongs, then you get an F and you deal with it.  Mama ain’t telling the teacher that the bad grade will hurt your self esteem and please change it or I’ll have to talk to the administration.

Quite the opposite, my friends.

When my son struggles to pay attention and perform well in a class, I tell the teacher that they can contact me whenever they want, discipline him as needed,  and that I will implement the removal of privileges in my home until he gets his act straight.  Then he gets a serious talking to at home.

I do want to make note, that there are certainly cases in which some teachers don’t know how to handle a certain child due to a learning disability or sensory disorder. This is another issue that seems to be growing epidemically, and with so many kids in one classroom that need extra help, it can be overwhelming to the teacher.

In these cases, I think the parents have to be their child’s best advocate and ask for the teacher and/or school to provide the specifics that are needed for the child to have the best learning experience possible.  However, this isn’t the scenario I’m talking about.  I’m talking about good ol’ run of the mill situations in which our kids are just maybe not doing what they are supposed to….and yet the teachers are getting flack for it.

This issue extends over into extracurricular activities as well.  Moms and dads up in arms because their child didn’t get to be in the front of the chorus line for the school musical, or didn’t get enough game time during a basketball game.  Listen, we all want our kids to be happy and successful, but the truth of the matter is sometimes they aren’t going to be that great at whatever it is we want them to be great at. 

Sometimes they are going to be downright awful.  

Other times they may actually be kid wizards but still not get the spotlight, because you know what?  There are other kids who are amazing at (fill in the blank) too.  Just luck of the draw.  I hear my educator friends tell me far too often that even if they are able to give the parents constructive criticism about what they can do to help their child perform better, the parents become offended, tell the teacher they don’t know what they are talking about, and become increasingly patronizing. 

So then what? 

Why not accept that your child can and will mess up, and that people will want to help them, or help you deal with them in a better way?  It doesn’t make you a bad parent. It doesn’t make your kid a loser. It just means we are all human, and for God’s sake lets allow the village to help raise the child.

Every time a parent insists their child can do no wrong, every time a parent insists their kid deserves to be team captain, prima ballerina, school council president…whether the kid actually deserves it or not….they are doing that child a huge disservice.  In order to become a healthy, stable, fully functioning adult you have to understand from early on that the world owes you NOTHING. 

You have to know what it feels like to win AND to lose…and that you will probably lose a lot more than you win.  You have to know that even though you are great at something, there are other people just as good if not better than you, and that is ok.  You also have to know that maybe, just maybe, you really stink at something…and if you can embrace that fact then you can work harder to get better….or you can see what other things you can naturally excel in instead.

See, if as parents we insist that all of the teachers, coaches, mentors, instructors, etc, that our kids have are wrong…and that our kids are always right….those kids are going to be in for a seriously rude awakening once they leave our nests.  There are no participation trophies handed out in the School of Life.

We also need to understand that even our most well behaved kids will sometimes do really shitty things.  Once out of the house, our angels might say some embarrassingly inappropriate things around their friends, and they might even get caught doing so.  They might  hit, push, shove, or trip someone.  Is that ok? Absolutely not…but if it happens, and there are witnesses, can we please, as parents, stop making excuses for the bad behavior? 

I know how mortifying it can be to have a kid get called out for misbehavior.  It’s an innate response to feel like that reflects on us, and that now we will be judged for being bad parents.  Truth is, it happens to ALL of us. ALL kids can go from cherub to Kracken in 2.5 seconds flat.

Every. Single. One. Of. Them.

So maybe I’m weird in that I can be so objective about my kids, but I’m not superwoman.  I think it’s something all of us can do and be.  We need to stop being afraid that our children failing at something or acting out or maybe not performing as we would expect or desire is in any way a reflection of who they are as people and who we are as parents. We are all in this together.

We may have different income tax brackets, privileges, and area codes…but the struggles are all real.  We made the decision to bring kids into the world…to leave behind a legacy. Along with that comes an unbelievable amount of work. Sometimes that hard work will pay off right away, other times it will take years, and yet other times it won’t pay off at all….but at the end of the day we have to understand that our kids aren’t perfect….and they never will be. 

We all grew up with our own imperfections, with parents who probably took the belt to our bottoms if we didn’t respect our teachers…and yet here we are. Our kids will be just fine.

So let’s please stop arguing with the people we entrust our kids to. They have an unbelievably taxing job, and get paid peanuts to do it.  They deserve our support, not disrespect.  Let them teach what they were trained to teach.  Let them call our kids out if need be, and let us support them when that happens. It’s the only way our kids will learn to be truly well rounded…..and a slice of humble pie never hurt anyone.  I’ll take mine a la mode.

header photo by Barrett Ward @unsplash

**As an affiliate, I make a small percentage of every sale made via links in my blog.**