Category: Bo, Jack, Mark — and Donna

Parenting Advice: Pay Attention

Mark H. Stith: "...pay attention."
Mark H. Stith: “…pay attention.”

The best parenting advice I’ve ever heard came from my youngest, Mark, after he grew up and had children of his own.  He and his wife have five.

“You have to pay attention,” he told me.

If you’re paying attention, and a child gets a foot or two off the path you’ve chosen for him or her, you can say, “Move to your right a little.” And they do and that’s that. No big deal.

But if you’re not paying attention, Mark said, before you know it they are way off the path, down there in the creek somewhere or tangled up in a bunch of briers. You have to go get them. There’s a lot shouting. You’re upset, they’re upset.

All that could be avoided if you would just pay attention.

Coming Monday: The Lesson

Thump ’em, Bo!

My oldest son, Bo, was not all that well coordinated.  So when he got to the fourth grade and tried out for Knightdale’s Mighty Mite football team, his first few practices didn’t go well. One evening he came home crying.

Bo
Bo couldn’t catch the ball…

“I couldn’t catch the ball,” he told me. “The other boys could catch it, but I couldn’t catch it.”

I was not surprised.  He couldn’t catch a baseball very well either.  Or hit one.  But he was smart, and strong, and he always tried hard.

I told him, “Bo, you don’t have to catch the ball. All you have to do is grab those other boys after they catch it and throw ’em on the ground.”

He stopped crying right then and a HUGE smile spread across his face.  Throw them on the ground?  He could do that.  

He was good at throwing them on the ground.
…but he learned to catch the guys who did.

Bo played nine years of football.  On defense he was a linebacker where he specialized in throwing boys on the ground. On offense he was a guard and he got to where he was pretty good at knocking them down, too.  His senior year at East Wake High School, near Raleigh, he was captain of his team, All Metro, Metro 3-A Player of the Year, and All East.

Coming Friday: Teaching Moment