“What hurts us the deepest teaches us the most,” my sister told me a few weeks ago. It sounds a lot like Nietzsche’s comment “that which doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.”

Things are changing.  If you don’t believe me check the way we communicate. Check the way we drive.  Check the way we even watch TV. There was a time when we didn’t have a TV. Families sat and listened to the radio. We created images of people we never saw and no matter what; they managed to fulfill whatever expectations we had. Then we were graced with TV, as we got to see the faces of the people we once drew, painted and colored in front of the radio. Initially, we didn’t have remotes, and parents depended on children to change the channel. It didn’t matter where the children sat.  If we needed the channel changed, we just had to tell the children to do it. And they did it.

What’s changed?

Well, in many cases, children today have their own TV, in their own room, which contributes to some of the disconnects in families today. Of course there are remotes, where we don’t have to get up to change the channel, but this modern technology still requires many times our kids to at least program the remote to the point we can use them. The significant thing is we remain connected. It’s not easy, but essential.

That’s what many of us realize, sometime too late.  But whatever it takes, I challenge you to find a way to stay connected. Sometimes when we lose that connection we hurt, but if we listen, we learn and try hard to not repeat mistakes we see others make, or we have made. It’s not easy to remain in the present.  As shared by me before, the ‘transcendental elements of fathering,’ creeps in as we allow our past or our future to affect how we deal with those things that help us bond. Avoiding being in the moment can result in pain that is reflected in many of the plans we try to make in helping our children grow.

Gandhi tells us that “we must be the change we want to see in the world.” That’s why I teach.  I teach because my students learn just as much from themselves as they learn from me. I teach because I learn as much from them as they think I teach them. I teach because in a society that is moving as fast as our society is moving, I need to hear what it is that my sons hear, so I can have a better ear to listen to their way of seeing things. And I need that; an additional ear when they come home because in most cases they have no one at school to whom they can relate.

And when you listen, it’s amazing what you hear. Some years ago in a group of 15 years old Hispanics 26% of them indicated they expected to attend college. It’s one thing to hear that, but upon listening to everything they had to say, the interview discovered that only 78% indicated the jobs they wanted required college. The point?  The end must always be in sight.  Why go to college if the job you want doesn’t require college? That’s one question.  But the better question is what is it I want to do and how do I prepare to do that.

These are questions you generally need to ask someone you can trust, and as much as I would like to think that many of our youth would ask their fathers, many don’t have a father around. Of students in grades 1 – 12, 39% live in homes without their biological father. Among teens, 67% lived with their biological father, but 91% live with their biological mothers. Is this important? Well, 85% of youth in jail and 71% of high school dropouts are from fatherless homes. That could be the reason 77.1% of adults 18 – 34 have unresolved issues with their fathers. That means they have not worked through issues that in some cases won’t even let the kids handle the remote. Yet fathers are important, particularly since in a 1999 study I did, middle-class fathers felt inadequate about what they know about parenting, but adequate about being able to parent. A subsequent 2001 study by Rohner and Veneziano found that father involvement is seen as just as important as mother involvement.

And even if fathers are not in the home on a regular basis, they still have an impact, as children whose non-resident fathers paid child support are more likely to get A’s, less likely to repeat a grade of be suspended from school. Fathers’ involvement cannot be overlooked, especially as you look as how boys struggle in school. Researchers tell us that 80% of drop-outs are boys. Boys earn 70% of Ds & Fs. They make up 2/3 of the special education classes. Of school suspensions 70% are boys.  Fast forward a few years and you realize the importance of the projections that for every 9 women graduating from college, there are only 7 men as Men on college campuses have declined 14% since 1976.

When you look at these facts, what is it that makes us stronger?  What is it teaching us?  I don’t have the answer, but I’m going to give you a few things to think about. If you have a son or daughter who is in school and have not started talking to them about what they’re going to do when they graduate from high school, then start talking. If you have a son or daughter and have not asked them what college they will attend, start asking. If you have a son or daughter who is a junior in high school and have not checked when the first opportunity for them to take either the SAT or ACT test, then start checking. Don’t be like some kids and get short-sheeted when they discovered they could not apply for scholarships because they had not taken the tests needed for the application. Think about these things as you raise your children, especially when you think about what you had to do to get where you wanted to be…and it didn’t kill you.

“For a father to reason with a child is fine if he can reach the child’s reason without losing his own.”
John Mason Brown
from Always my Dad calendar

Archie Wortham, Ph.D.
Husband of Suzie
Father of Jeremy & Myles
Educator & Columnist