This week’s aspect of this month’s leadership trait is an oxymoron: ignorant intelligence. It simply means “not knowing you can’t do something,” and it speaks to those times when our desire carries us far into an accomplishment simply because we do not have anything telling us it can’t. I told the kids that it was like when they first started walking. They didn’t know their little legs couldn’t stand well, so they pulled themselves up on every couch and coffee table until the legs kept them up. I reminded them that their parents did not push them down and say, “You can’t do that” to try to keep them from trying. On the contrary, they probably took video!
Knowing when to fuel our children’s desires and when to give them a dose of reality is a very hard skill to acquire. It requires lots of guidance so that your child does not end up on a couch, discussing either your lack of support or his failure due to your allowing him to believe that he could do anything. So, how do we navigate this narrow strait?
First of all, look back at your own life and how your parents taught you. My mother taught piano lessons at our house. I wanted desperately to play the piano, but I did not want lessons. Being on the gifted side, I was also stubborn, and I had it in my mind that lessons meant more practice, and I wanted to be free to play when I wanted to. I played for my middle school choir and sometimes my high school choir. I accompanied soloists in band and choir, and I played for myself when I sang at church. I was a musician, and my goal was to be a high school music teacher. No one had told me I couldn’t. In fact, everyone, including my parents, told me that I was very talented, and they provided a way for me to go to one of the best vocal music schools in the state.
When I got to that school, I did make the varsity choir and I was chosen to be in an a cappella vocal group, but my vocal coach was one of the lesser teachers, and I practically had to start over in piano. The only thing the music department ever told me that I did really well was reading music. This was the first time I’ve ever been told that I wasn’t up to snuff… and it killed my dream. Okay, that’s not completely true. I killed my dream. The university told me that, if I wanted to do what I dreamed, I was going to have to put a whole lot more effort into my piano skills and my vocal lessons. I didn’t want to. That cut into my social time! So, I didn’t, and I lost getting to go to that school.
Now, I wouldn’t trade any of that journey. It led me to elementary education, which has led me to all areas of education… even eventually to high school music teacher! And I didn’t need a couch to come to this conclusion. So, here are some lessons from what my parents did:
1) They had a piano available so that I could learn, even though it was on my own terms.
2) They gave me many opportunities to sing in public. (It helped that my dad was a minister of music!)
3) They applauded my accomplishments in music: honor choirs, solos, a senior schedule that included varsity choir, jazz ensemble, and honors theory!
4) They sent me to the private school where some of the best musicians were cultivated.
And this is the most important one…
5) They told me the requirements for staying there, and when I didn’t meet them, took that opportunity away.
Every year as my daughter and I counsel high schoolers as to where to apply for college, I am amazed at the number of kids who have totally unrealistic goals. They’ve got a 3.0 GPA and an ACT score below 20, and they are convinced they will go to a service academy or go to medical school. That’s not going to happen. Where did the parents mess up? It was back in seventh or eighth grade when they did not have a conversation with their child about career and future desires.
Now, I will tell you that neither of my kids had settled on what they would eventually choose as a major by their eighth grade year, but both had strong ideas. In 6th and 7th grade, my son’s grades were A’s and B’s with maybe a C in there. He could have been a straight-A student, but he wanted to “fit in.” Right before his eighth grade year, he announced that he would like to go to West Point like his dad had. I knew that was highly unlikely because I knew he wouldn’t want to later based upon things only moms see. I didn’t tell him he couldn’t do it, though. I took him to West Point for a tour. They thought he was in high school. They told him to be the captain of every team, to be the president of every council, and to get good grades and high scores on his college entrance exams. He never made less than an A after that visit. He did, however, end up going to the School of the Art Institute at Chicago instead of West Point. Impressive in and of itself, it was a full 180 from a service academy. Because I had allowed him to investigate his idea, he got advice that led to a standard that translates to any major in any school.
My daughter knew she had a head for leadership and business very early. By her junior year, she had declared that she would major in business. As people learned of this, they kept saying, “Wow! You must be good at math.” She didn’t like math. This led to a tearful conversation about losing her plan and not having a back-up. She and I began to investigate in what she had strengths, and all of her marketing during the six years she had done BEST Robotics led us to explore public relations. Her exact words were, “I can major in that?” Not only did she major in it, she finished her bachelors and masters in four years and won the prestigious Jack Coten Page Principles Case Study Award from the Arthur W. Page Society and the Institute for Public Relations.
If you want to be a part of the conversation, you have to be IN the conversation. Kids from families who have never actually discussed college rarely end up in a great college. They’ve just “ never really thought about it.” The conversation can be an ongoing discussion about possibilities. That means that family trips should also include visits to colleges in the area once your kids are late middle school. It means that you should investigate their strengths with them, and when they express interest in a certain area, you have to resist the urge to take charge of making that happen. Offer to help them explore the idea, but let them take the lead in how to do that (as long as it is reasonable, of course). If you will create a dialogue about your child’s future with your child, you will be able to know about which dreams you can let them have ignorant intelligence and about which you should be very frank about the possibilities.
- Michelle