Friday Night Parenting

Friday night at the high school football game.  Lights are shining.  Score board lit up.  Mascots dancing.  Players running, tackling, throwing, kicking.  Coaches pacing the sidelines.  Cheerleaders cheering (mine is the pretty one with the pom-poms and the pony tail). 

Does this bring back any fond memories for those of you who are already celebrating high school reunions?  Now that my daughter is in high school, I find myself spending more Friday nights in the bleachers than I ever did when I was her age.  It’s fun.  It’s exciting.  It’s embarrassing!

Why the embarrassment?  Well, as teenagers, we’re given a bit of leeway to act less than mature.  But as adults, we’re supposed to be able to model the kind of behavior that we want our teens to grow into.  Not so at Friday night football, sad to say.

As Hillary Clinton’s book It Takes a Village reminded us, it is not just the responsibility of one adult to raise one child.  We are all responsible for the young people that we share the globe with.  We are role models every day, every minute of our lives.  And as such, we are not given carte blanche to get drunk and act like obnoxious fools just because we’re in the football stands (or in the hockey bleachers, or at little league…).

We all need to remember that the young people of today are looking to each and every one of us adults for cues on how to be cool adults.  (Not drunken fool cool, but rather I-want-to-be-like-him/her-when-I-grow-up cool.)  It may not be your flesh and blood child watching smirk-faced (LOL) and  open-mouthed (OMG) as you are escorted out of the stands by campus security, but it’s you’re community child, you’re village child, your global child.   And that child is always watching and learning. 

So be careful what you’re modeling from the Friday night bleachers.  The kids sitting near you may not be in class, but be assured that they are taking mental notes.

Life is good.  Life is precious.  Namaste.  –Lori