Summer Parenting Goals: How Close Are You?

Summer parenting goals are like New Years’ resolutions. It’s better to keep the list short and sweet, or you’re liable to find them too difficult to pursue. In any event, with summer vacation winding down to its inexorable end, it’s good to think back to where you were at the start. What had you intended to accomplish with your children? Have you achieved your parenting goals for the season?

I set my sights low this season, in part because I had an extended business trip away from my family, so my time with my children was considerably shortened. But that doesn’t mean I had no goals at all. My goal this summer was to teach my children to scrutinize the articles they read online rather than accept them at face value.

I’m a news junkie, you see. I devour every piece of news I can get my hands on. But I worry that my kids see me consuming the news and don’t see the internal mental process I use to sift through what I read. I worry they’ll mimic my outward behavior without having learned the art of critical thinking.

The Fantasy

Therefore I imagined holding forth to a rapt audience of two (my two youngest children) on how to spot what is missing in a news piece; how to track the origins of a story; and how to determine whether or not a news item is credible.

This goal was part of an ongoing campaign to make the most of a situation in which my kids spend most of their waking moments on their various computer screens. I’d noted that kids tend to repeat what they read on the Internet as truisms. The other day my youngest son, for instance, mentioned to me something he’d read online: that people who talk to themselves have higher IQ’s.

He meant to say something kind to me. I am infamous in our immediate family, for talking to myself without any realization that I am doing so. I made an appreciative noise and asked if he could tag me on the article so I could read it for myself.

“Sure thing,” he said.

Not long after, I had a notification that I’d been tagged by him on a post. I opened the post and instead of the article I expected, the link took me to a meme. Not a meme with a link to a credible, scientific source, but a meme from a dubious website specializing in lists of interesting “facts.”

This put me in a sticky situation. My child meant to say something kind to me and it wouldn’t do to tell him that his source wasn’t credible. If anything, he expected appreciation for being so nice.

I “liked” the post and while I was thinking of what I might comment, his older sibling jumped in and said in a smart-alecky way, what I’d refrained from suggesting, namely that “People who listen to the internet are more likely to be gullible.”

Sibling rivalry much?

Sheesh. Big brother had put me in a bind by expressing what I’d thought but had refrained from saying.

Maybe I was wrong (do parents ever know for sure they are doing the right thing?) but my gut sense prodded me to react to the intent, rather than to the content of this thread. By sharing the meme, Little Bro was being nice. By responding as he did, Big Bro was being mean. So I responded to the meanness. I affixed my own comment:

“People who insult other people are likely to have poor characters.”

The Reality

And Boom. Just like that I’d launched a war. Big Bro wrote: “People who know what they are have good characters.”

Okay, so not really a war, but perhaps a limited skirmish, since I neatly nipped it in the bud at that point. I knew he, Big Bro, didn’t have much fight left in him. I left a pallid, “You wish,” and that was the end of that. The ugly thread I’d unwittingly elicited was over.

But seriously, what had happened to my original goal? My goal of teaching my kids to be intelligent readers?

It wasn’t lost, if that’s what you were thinking. Rather, I found my goal had evolved.

The Example

Big Bro had acted on his jealousy and displayed overt sibling rivalry with his nasty comment about his brother being gullible. At the same time, in thinking over his comment, I realized that I was already reaching my “summer” parenting goals without having been aware of that fact. Big Bro had absorbed the lesson over time: not to take at face value what is read on the Web. He’d absorbed it over time from my example.

On reflection I realized that while my goal was meritorious, it had to be an ongoing effort, and not a finite, three-month parenting fling. The message was, in fact, trickling down to my children and it would be only a matter of time until Little Bro got the message as well.

Big Bro’s hostility served a purpose in this respect as a vehicle for passing on the values he’d learned in our home—my values—to his younger sibling. So he did it in a mean-spirited way: isn’t that after all, perfectly normal behavior at this age, if not behavior to praise?

Someday, perhaps when they have children of their own, Big Bro will have learned to teach Little Bro the things he needs to know in a kinder, gentler way. That, at any rate, is the hope.

And with that thought, it occurred to me that:

• Children are always watching their parents so that the key to almost everything they learn goes back to the example parents set. If I am kind, my child will learn kindness. Eventually.
• If I am a wise consumer of the Internet, my child will learn to be a wise consumer of the Internet. In the fullness of time.
• If I am an able parent or a good sibling, my children will learn from my behavior and follow suit. God (or insert Higher Power of choice here) willing.

Summer parenting goals, as it turns out, are not a bit like New Years’ resolutions. You can have a list of parenting goals as long as your arm and still realize every last one of them. You just may not realize it’s happening over time, when in fact, the realization of your goals is happening at all times, all the time, for as long as you are a parent.

And perhaps beyond.

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