The Parental Involvement Puzzle

When do you let a child fail at school?

By Dorothy Nixon

The other day I got a phone call from my son's English teacher, Mr. Owen, saying in a warm, almost apologetic-sounding voice, "Andrew has a project, a biography, long past due and I have to submit his marks into the office on Friday. Can you get him onto it, fast?"

I felt angry at Andrew: This was not the first time I have got such a call. Last year, his 7th grade English teacher contacted me with similar news. Andrew had failed to hand in five assignments at that time!

I felt betrayed by Andrew, as well: Repeatedly, over the Christmas holidays I had asked him if he had any homework to do--and he had repeatedly answered with a distracted, indifferent "No."

Most of all I was irked at Andrew: My son, who usually achieves an honors level average with a minuscule amount of effort, seemed intent on sabotaging himself.

Andrew is an extraordinarily talented writer. He's got all the gifts; all the gifts I wish I had. When inspired, Andrew can sit at the grimy keyboard of his 486 computer and with winged fingertips effortlessly compose an epic poem in perfect meter or a stunningly stark, nihilistic science fiction piece. As Andrew is not especially well read, I have to assume that the Muse and he are on very intimate terms.

"I don't understand it," I tell Mr. Owen, whom my son describes as a poetry-oozing ogre, "He lied to me. He said he had no homework to do over the Christmas holidays. He is resisting doing well in English for some reason. He just wants to fail. - and he has such gifts!"

"Yes, he is a very bright boy, Mr. Owen agrees. " I was like that, too, at school," he continues, as if to comfort me. (What a nice ogre!) "but, marks for the next report card have to be in by Friday. He has to complete that project!"

Although Owen has made no attempt to make me feel responsible for my son's procrastinating ways, as some teachers have in the past, I still feel deflated after taking the phone call. I can't help but take it personally.

What am I doing wrong? Why can't I make Andrew love high school (even if I didn't) and be responsible so-that-he-will-make-it-in-the-real-world? Isn't that my duty as a modern intensive-style mother?

Andrew isn't at home, so, luckily, he's spared any angry knee-jerk reaction and/or boring lecture I might have otherwise laid on him. I have my own deadline dilemma, anyway. I rush off to my home "office" cubicle to complete a freelance assignment I've put off since before Christmas. (As my husband, Blair, is fond of pointing out, Andrew is more like me, and I am more like Andrew, than we each care to admit.)

Blair, who almost didn't make it through high school, is fond of pointing out something else as well. "You should let Andrew fail, sometimes, " he tells me, point blank. "You baby him too much."

"Let him fail?" My heart skips a beat. "Easy for you to say! You don't get the phone calls from the teacher. You don't have to sign all the tests and essays and course plans that flood in weekly. You don't go to the parent-teacher interviews.

"Sometimes, " I whine, "it feels as if the the teachers are watching ME, as if it is my performance as a parent that is being judged."

You know how it feels. It's hard being a parent of a school-aged children these days. We get so many mixed messages sent our way with regard to parental involvement, it's nearly impossible to know when to push and when to back off.

All this school-generated paperwork is supposed to keep us parents informed of our children's progress, should we be inclined to neglect it, but, at the other end of the spectrum, I've seen mothers so passionately interested in their children's schoolwork they basically DO the homework and projects for their kids. (I've fallen into that trap with my kids' projects myself, when they've left them to the last minute.) Besides, what parent can resist correcting grammar as s/he/ helps with some last minute typing?

So many of us, these uncertain, downsizing days, are afraid to let our children fail!

But failing is part of life. My husband Blair, who has a reading disability, figured that out years ago. His early academic defeats set him back a bit, for sure, but, at 24, when he decided on his own to go back to technical school as a mature student, miracle of miracles, he made the Dean's List.

Failures can be learning experiences at school, at work, at play, and at life. Life is full of ups and downs, wins and losses, and even the most competent people grow monkeys on their shoulders; you know, those nagging, often tiny tasks we tend to put off -and off - because of some psychological block. Well, why aren't schoolchildren allowed to have their monkeys, too? How come we often expect more from our children than we do from our friends, from our coworkers, and even from ourselves?

Andrew has told me why he doesn't like English class: He doesn't want to grow up to be his Mom. "I know I am a good writer," he says, "but I HATE writing. You just want me to be a writer because that's what YOU do!"

I think I know why he does his best to avoid getting high marks, too. He wears eyeglasses (albeit cool John Lennon peepers) and suffers from mild animal-induced asthma, and, on TV, only nerds wear eye glasses, have asthma, and get high, high marks. Or maybe it's because they don't teach NHL management techniques in high school. OK.I should stop psychoanalyzing my child. I should probably let my non-academically inclined husband work things out with him. That line of thinking's not entirely heretical, you know.

The other day I overheard the two discussing sports, Andrew's one true passion in life.

"You know, Andrew," my husband said. "Sports writers get to travel all over with the teams and meet all the players. "

"Cool!" my son replied, his interest clearly engaged.

"But only the best writers get hired as sports writers," my husband continued. "There's a lot of competition and sports writers have to be very, very good. They have to use all kinds of fancy words and metaphors."

"Oh," said Andrew, his voice falling. "Lucky for you, you've got all the talent to be a world-class sports writer," Blair swiftly interjected.

"Cool,". answered Andrew.

He headed straight for the computer keyboard and started to type. Apparently, you don't have to be the most book-learned parent in the family to be the most effective one.

1999© Dorothy Nixon, all rights reserved