The Parental Pride switch

All parents know about it. The second you lay eyes on your own children, it flips this switch somewhere inside you; the Parental Pride switch. From that day on, whenever your child does something, and it can be anything (well, the positive stuff), in your eyes, they are the smartest, most-talented child prodigy in the world. You could have a friend tell you "My son just won the Nobel Prize in medicine at the age of 17 for discovering the cure for cancer" and you would say, or at least be thinking, "That's nothing, my daughter, who is only 4, just spelled cat." I know you are all smiling right now because you know what I am talking about. It is one of those God-given, natural instincts that kicks in that is hard to explain. I'm sure it serves a purpose. My theory is that it is a way to build the confidence of our offspring so that some day they can go out into the world and survive. Or maybe it is just a way to give parents a glimmer of hope that we will not end up on the Dr. Phil show some day.

In the last 3 months I have had a couple of occasions to experience this parental phenomenon that can turn you into a grinning or blubbering fool. In December, the wife and I learned that our 11-year-old daughter actually has some singing talent. She and another girl sang an a Capella piece to open the Christmas Cantata at church. When they started singing, we looked at each other with stunned looks on our faces and then my eyes immediately filled with tears. Talk about recessive genes!! They sounded like angels! At that moment, she was the next Celine Dion or Carey Underwood!! Then, just last night, we watched a performance of the Charleston Symphony Orchestra and Chorus which included a piece by a combined middle school chorus that included our daughter. As they started singing, the switch got flipped and I again found myself grinning from ear-to-ear. I fought the urge to stand and yell "Way to go, Megan!!" right in the middle of the piece.

The son also causes these periods of temporary giddiness. He is playing drums in a newly-formed praise band at church and last week during a rehearsal, he was doing really well. I found myself grinning and cheering on the inside every time he nailed a good fill or got complimented by the director. Being an old drummer myself, I will claim the credit for this talent. (Though he is already better than I ever was) Also, this past weekend, he went snowboarding for the first time with his Boy Scout troop. When they got back Sunday, all of the parents that went were commenting on his abilities and none of them believed it was his first time snowboarding. He has always had this innate athletic ability and sense of balance. He surfs, skim boards, wake-boards, water-skis, skate-boards, you name it, he can get on it and stay on it. I can take no credit for this one at all! (Remind me to tell you about the Razor scooter incident one day)

The other thing that we try to keep in mind is that we can go overboard with the pride and the compliments, too. We have all seen kids that are conceited and think that they can do no wrong and this can lead to problems down the road. I think it is important to let your kids fail once-in-a-while too. They have to know that no one is perfect and you have to be able to bounce back from failure. It is just more proof that this parenting thing we do is the hardest job in the world, hands down. As I've said before, all we can do is love 'em, support 'em, guide 'em and pray. In the meantime, I am going to go wait for the phone calls from the talent agencies.