We were all raised imperfectly and we will most definitely raise our children imperfectly, as well. Our imperfections come with the territory and we can ill afford to be obsessed about them. A parenting expert once quoted the French philosopher, Voltaire, “The best is the enemy of the good.” By that, it is assumed that he meant that we can be so focused on getting things perfect that we don’t get things right.
Whatever we do, it need not be ‘perfect’. We can never be perfect, but we do have to give our best effort. As you look around some parents seem to be sterling role models, whose children just stand out in behavior, bearing, confidence, attitude, politeness, and always having perfect rodeos. But when we really look into the matter, we all know this is too good to be true.
Our expectations from our children can make all the difference in their rodeoing. If they see that we only care for low quality output, that is what they will deliver. It’s human nature. We adjust effort to expectations in our place of work. If the expectations are set low, then our effort and output are low, also.
A more important issue here is winning every time. We can also go the other extreme and say that winning is all that matters, that points are all that matter. Some children have even gone to the thinking that their parents’ love for them is dependent on how high their rodeos or grades are.
Grades and Points are numbers or letters that we use to keep score. They are, at best, indicators of something – maybe success, intelligence, effort, virtue, character, etc. Maybe they are like the other positive numbers in our life – assets, salary, ratios, stock portfolios, etc. They probably mean something, but, ultimately, they are numbers and things.
So when we tell our kids that we expect them to do well in their rodeos or anything, we tell them the limits of grades or points. Points are not everything, but they are not meaningless. We also set them up for success. We do not simply set expectations, then sit back and wait for them to deliver the goods. We have to equip them, support them, mentor them, and monitor them.
There are parents who do not want their children to have a tough life the way they did. This usually comes from parents who made something of themselves against all odds, especially a desperately poor background. The stories are real: walking to school and skipping meals because of lack of money, stretching what little they had and skimping on everything, making the best of a sub-quality education, which were all their parents could afford. Rodeoing in the oldest truck and trailer there. Having the oldest or slowest horse or even worse the youngest horse with the least experience.
These parents lived what American writer William Faulkner spoke of when he said that the poor know the joy and despair of a penny found and a penny lost. They had no nest egg from their parents to start with upon graduation. They fixed their sights on what they could do rather than wallow in self-pity or embarrassment.
Parents in this predicament have lost sight of how hardship shaped their lives for the better and taught them to be tough, resilient, resourceful, hardworking, and demanding on themselves. The desire to spare their kids the bitterness is understandable, but misdirected.
These lessons packaged well can make a real mark on their children’s values. I think it is natural for all parents to want the best for their kids and want them to succeed. You don’t want them to have losses or heart ache. I think this is one of the hardest things as a parent to find balance between teaching and raising your kids, making sure they know they are loved, and the hardest one is letting them learn the hard way and learn from losing, heart ache, and pain. I firmly believe that some our greatest learning experience have come from loosing or mistakes we have made. The winning is a reward for learning from those mistakes and practicing to improve. It is an amazing feeling to win just don’t loose sight of what matters most. I think Rodeo offers so much for our kids to learn that we need to focus on all the things that will help them succeed in life, the winning will then follow.
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