My parents, when us little sprouts were growing up, never made much of a fuss over us. If we got good grades, they nodded approvingly. And if we didn\u2019t, they told us to buckle down and smarten up, school wasn\u2019t some game. They never came to our sports events to watch their star kids play and we were glad they didn\u2019t because, well, to be honest, we weren\u2019t stars. We were just your basic kids, vanilla, ordinary, okay.<\/p>\n
When they became grandparents, however, things changed. Their grandkids, my god, they were Einsteins, they were football stars, they were just all around Wows. My friends who have grandkids have those same kids, all of them the smartest, best looking, most talented brats you ever had the privilege to hear bragged about. I don\u2019t know, maybe if I had kids, they\u2019d be superheroes too. But I didn\u2019t and I bet they wouldn\u2019t be if I did.<\/p>\n
When I look back at my childhood (okay, the early years, not the present years), I drifted through sandlot baseball games, marbles, some fights, some homemade soap box derby races, all the stuff we hoodlums did back in the halcyon days of Eisenhower\u2019s America. I didn\u2019t think I had to be a genius. Or a basketball star. Or a movie actor. My folks didn\u2019t push us munchkins out into a competitive universe with a prescription for failure by convincing us we were God\u2019s gift to the free world. We were encouraged to try stuff, everything from track and field to chess to debate clubs, but they didn\u2019t come down and play soccer mom and get into fights with the coach or the parents of our opponents. They\u2019d ask how it went and if we got our butts kicked, they said better luck next time. These weren\u2019t life and death competitions.<\/p>\n
I worry that we\u2019re trying too hard now. Sure, we\u2019d all like to think that the fruit that fell near the tree is special, the sweetest, the tastiest, the fastest growing, the most flowers. But I suspect we just set the kids up for disappointment. Ballet. Dropped out. Lacrosse. Never really liked it. Cheerleader. Couldn\u2019t do a head stand. Choir. Had a tin ear. Academics. Got a C+. Life. Just normal.<\/p>\n
My folks accepted normal. So did we. What they wanted for us was happiness. It\u2019s not a bad wish. In their own hands-off way, they taught us how to get there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My parents, when us little sprouts were growing up, never made much of a fuss over us. If we got good grades, they nodded approvingly. And if we didn\u2019t, they told us to buckle down and smarten up, school wasn\u2019t some game. They never came to our sports events to watch their star kids play […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rantings-and-ravings"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8247"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8247\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8248,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8247\/revisions\/8248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}