Key Parenting Tip for Dads

Dads, I highly encourage you to read this Roy Exum essay, "Why Climb To The Top?"

This key message about not squelching your children from trying things -- even hard, possibly "unsafe" things -- is much needed today. Here's an excerpt to whet your appetite:
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When my son was in the ninth grade, he weighed 105 pounds and was a decidedly stringy five-foot-seven. One day he came home to mention he had gone out for spring football practice and … well, I didn’t say much.

By then I’d spent considerable time watching vicious practices on every football field in the Southeastern Conference and knew full well what a 6-4, 245-pound middle linebacker could do when fully loaded with mad. A guy like that, his eyes glazed and possessing speed my child would never know, could indeed cut my baby in half.

So I called the coach, a longtime friend who I knew would run my boy off, and told him my kid was too small, too slow, too dumb and too young. That’s when Pete Potter cut me down like a tree with the words, “Let’s let the boy decide.”

Well, I then tried to stammer an apology or an excuse, telling Pete I shouldn’t have ever called, and he said, “No, I was going to call you … if I ever see you come to even one of your son’s practices I’ll whip your butt. You pick him up every single day after practice, and always buy him a Coke on the way home, but let me be clear; practice belongs to him, not you. Don’t ruin it for him.”

About six years after that, about the same time during the spring, I was at Fort Benning to watch the same boy graduate from the U.S. Army’s Ranger school. They have this elite ceremony, where each dad pins on his son’s shoulder tab, and it is the probably the most moving experience a proud father can experience.

Of the initial 280 hand-picked candidates in my son’s class, 119 hopefuls had “washed out,” unable to stomach the grueling demands that each Ranger must know about himself. How long you can stay awake without becoming delirious? How long can you body function without food? How fast can you go up a 5,000 foot mountain? These are among the nicer things each Ranger must know before that tab is earned because the soldier’s life, the lives of others who will accompany him, depend on it.

A couple of Andrew’s buddies didn’t have anyone to pin on their tabs so I was further honored and one, whose dad lived too far away to come to the ceremony, grinned as I pinned on his patch. “Mr. Exum, sir, may I asked you a question, sir?” I told him I would be delighted and then came, “Sir, who was Pete Potter?”

I laughed, telling him Pete was Andrew’s beloved football coach. “Sir, I figured as much. In February it was about 36 degrees and we were in Dahlonega, carrying 110-pound packs up the Continental Divide. It was sleeting, we were wet and we hadn’t eaten anything all day.

“About 2 o’clock that morning, when they let us take a 10-minute rest, it was the worst minute of my life when they called us back in file. I whispered to your son I couldn’t take another step. I couldn’t do it. I was done. I was going to tap-out.”

The now proud Ranger then recalled. “You know what happened? Your son hit me in the mouth with his fist as hard as he could, and yelled, ‘You never went through two-a day’s with Pete Potter! Get your pack and let’s get our asses to the top of this hill!’”

I tell that story not in a boastful way but as a first-hand reminder that the naysayers, those timid souls who would hold another person back so they themselves won’t reveal their own shortcomings, are a far bigger danger to society than are the risks our young adventurers pose.

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Read the whole thing.