The unnaturalness of sitting back
A friend of mine recently posted Rules Your Kids Did Not and Will Not Learn In School by Bill Gates on Facebook. Well actually several friends have posted it, but I responded to his because I didn’t like one word of it. It begins with Rule 1 – which says life is not fair, get used to it.
As a parent the thought of saying this to my child is absurd because a) I don’t feel that way, and b) I think it is wrong. Life is what it is and sometimes it is fair and sometimes not and sometimes it is overwhelmingly amazing and at times deeply boring in its rituals and ruts. But fair – that would not be in the vocabulary.
Rule 2 – The world doesn’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something before you feel good about yourself. Really? I don’t think so. Self-esteem is something that comes from within and there is a way to teach your child to have self-esteem by nurturing their natural rhythms and quirky directions they might choose to follow and letting them know that the world accommodates a myriad of people types. And accomplish is an overused word of the 80s to 00’s. What I hope my child accomplishes is to love and be loved.
Rule 3 – If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss. Really? I would tell my child that working for yourself is the most satisfying work you will do in this world, but since you want to be in a marching band – you have to learn teamwork and remember you are master of your domain, never anyone else. Especially a boss.
That is the first of the 11 rules on this faux chalkboard and I disagree with each one on here and could wax for hours about why and how wrong headed this entire list is, but suffice to say is I respectfully disagree.
