An Army of Normal Folks - When A Lack of Parenting Hurts Schools

Episode Date: December 6, 2024

For "Shop Talk", Coach Bill weighs in on an Army member's suggestion.Support the show: https://www.normalfolks.us/premiumSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey everybody, it's Bill Courtney with Shop Talk number 30. I love it. See, it's like walking into a shop, you know, in the door. Oh, that's right. That's... Yeah. Walk into a shop. Shop Talk.

You walk into a shop, you have Shop Talk. We didn't plan that at all when we originally did. I did. That's the whole reason I wanted a bell. So it sounded like a shop. Really? Yes. Well, thanks for telling me that. You're welcome. Evita sent it to us.

Anyway, shop talk number 30. It's a milestone. I'm going to butcher names as usual, but Keith Bosch or Keith Bok, Bok, it's B-A-U-C-H, so Bosch or Bok. Anyway, it's Keith. Keith sent me a Shop Talk suggestion and it's a little tricky to take up, but I want to take it up. It's about being a crappy parent. So Shop Talk number 30, don't be a crappy parent. Right after these brief messages from our generous sponsors. Hey guys, I'm Kate Max.

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Is your country falling apart? Feeling tired, depressed, a little bit revolutionary? Consider this, start your own country. I planted the flag. I just kind of looked out of like, this is mine. I own this. It's surprisingly easy. There are 55 gallons of water, 500 pounds of concrete. Everybody's doing it. I am King Ernest Emmanuel. I am the Queen of La Donia. I'm Jackson I, King of Caperburg. I am the Supreme Leader of the Grand Republic of Montonia.

Be part of a great colonial tradition. Well, why can't I trade my own country? My forefathers did that themselves. What could go wrong? No country willingly gives up their territory. I was making a racket with the black powder, you know, know with explosive warhead. Oh my god. What is that? Bullets. We still have the off-road portion to go. Listen to Escape from Zakistan. And we're losing daylight fast. That's Escape from ZAQistan on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your

podcasts. Welcome back everybody. Bill Courtney with the Army of Normal folks. Shock talk number 30. Here's what Keith wrote. I got a shop talk suggestion. Some parents, not all, expecting the school system to teach their kids the social aspects of life and not taking on the responsibility of parenting at home. Then they get upset when the school staff try to hold their kids accountable for their actions or lack thereof. I'm a parent of four, congratulations Keith, I'm a parent of four too, that is work for your wife. I'm a parent of four that all graduated from a small school in central Minnesota.

When I say small, I mean 480 students K through 12. I'm also an elected school board member for 14 years and see the struggles that the paraprofessionals, the teachers and administrations deal with. The fact that these students disrupt the learning environment for all students affect the students that really want to learn and are causing teachers to leave the profession and others to not join the profession of educating or the next generation. Please speak to the topic of parents taking the responsibility to be parents and not a friend to their kids. I'm aware that this does not apply to all parents. Wow. So when I graduated from Ole Miss, I was before I met Lisa,

I was going to get my doctorate in child psychology and I was going to save the world. Didn't have any money. So I took a job teaching school, coaching basketball, football and baseball while going to school to get my doctorate all for $17,500 a year. Oh, and I cut the grass during the summer on the football and baseball fields, which is really crappy in the summer. But at two degrees in here, I'm cutting grass, making $17,000 a year, but I was trying to be a second. Anyway, I was a teacher. I was a homeroom teacher. I taught English and psychology and then coach three sports and cut the aforementioned grass. That's what I did for a living.

And then I got married and we started having lots of kids and I couldn't afford to stick with that because I just had to make more money. I didn't have any insurance either. And one thing led to another and got in business. But that was my passion. And as most of you know, I continue to coach for the next 33 years. So I have seen the best of kids, I have seen some challenging kids, and I have seen the best of parents, and I have seen the worst of parents.

And this shop talk is on not being a crappy parent. I really appreciate what Keith said here, which is, please talk to the topic of parents taking the responsibility to be parents and not a friend to their kids. I have three thoughts here. One is, I'll start with Keith's thought, is that a parent's job is to be respected and even feared, but not liked. When parents are more concerned with being the cool parent rather than the accountability parent, you know, that's a bad thing. But I'm not sure people understand the burden that puts on others.

Because invariably kids that grow up or are in that type of environment, invariably those kids end up, because they're not used to being held accountable, being disruptive in classrooms, being disruptive on the ball field, and they are the genesis of all of the other kids starting to pull away from accountability. And it's interesting that Keith talks about paraprofessionals, teachers, and administrators that deal with it. And the fact that there's so much disruption in the learning environment that professionals and others are choosing now not to join the profession of educating our next generation. And y'all, teachers don't do it for the money. I don't know a teacher that ever got rich teaching.

They do it for the love of kids. They do it for the love of education. And they do it because it's a calling. But when we make that calling so hard to achieve because of poor parenting that we lose bright folks being willing to enter the profession just think of what education would look like 20 25 years from now the other thing is you know it's not the school's job to raise your child it's the school's job to try to educate your child but it's your job to raise your child, hold them accountable,

teach them civility, teach them right from wrong, and do the work to make them productive citizens. And then you ship them off to school on loan to be educated. When parents start abdicating the responsibility of actually raising children to the school system. Well, then don't we start down that slippery slope of systematic issues? I take Keith's comments to heart. Don't be a crappy parent by trying to be your kids friends. Be your kids mentor. Love them.

Support them. Teach them. But you got to be their accountability measure first. In addition to this, there are two other thoughts I had, especially one from coaching that I'll never forget, which is helicopter parents. For goodness sakes, would you please let your kids skin their knees? Would you please let your kids sit on the bench without whining to the coach about why your precious angel wouldn't get in playin time?

Would you please allow your kid to be disciplined when they messed up by someone else? Would you please allow your kids to fail? Would you please allow your kids to get zeros when they forget their homework rather than jumping in the car and running it up to school to give them their homework so they don't get a bad grade. Would you please allow your kids to learn from their mistakes rather than hovering over them and keeping them from any pain or anguish? Because I assure you, pain and anguish is coming when they become adults. And the way they learn to handle pain and anguish as adults is they get little doses of it as children while they're still in our nest so that we can nurse them back to health after they get hurt a little bit

but if you deprive them of failure as children you deprive them of the lessons of how to deal with failure you deprive them of the lessons of how to overcome obstacles and then when they become adults they're simply ill-prepared to enter life. Helicopter parents are destructive to children. Parents being friends to their kids rather than accountability are destructive to children. And they're tearing up our school systems and they're making the jobs of administrators and teachers and coaches and paraprofessionals and all the other people that are trying to educate your kids, they make it very difficult for them and

they make it miserable for the other kids in the class that are trying to do the right thing so stop it. Quit being a crappy parent. The third thing goes back to a shop talk we did recently, which is the power of encouragement. Tell you a quick story. I was coaching second grade football. My boys were on the team and there were a couple of kids who I'd coached and a couple of dads were helping me and we were just out there, you know, letting second graders bump around on each other and kind of learn how to play football and be teammates.

We weren't necessarily worried about winning a lot of games. We wanted everybody to, you know, enjoy the experience. Hopefully learn from it. And the third day of practice, we were told a new kid was showing up and we'll call this kid's John. That was not his name. John and his father walk up and his father looked like he walked straight off the set a full metal jacket. And he introduced John to us and he said, coaches, I'm let's call him Rodney. That was

not his name either the father, but we'll just say his name was Rodney. He said, I'm Rodney Smith and this is my boy, John. My two older sons both played football from first grade all the way through high school. Uh, one of them won a state championship, another one a city championship and they were just, they were just good boys. And he said, now this one, John right here, he's an inside dog and I want to see him grow up a little bit and he turned around and walked off. This man called his son an inside dog as he was introducing him to his football coaches

in second grade and I looked down on that kid and you could tell he wanted to be anywhere but on a hot football field in the grass with a helmet on his head. It just, football wasn't his thing. He wasn't interested. But he was drug out there and called an inside dog by his dad. I have no idea where that can ended up, but I do know three days after three days of practice. We never saw him again No surprise

But I've thought about that kid for 20 years now and I worry about him because if Measuring up to his father's standards of what a young boy was supposed to be was never gonna happen for that kid. I can only imagine at six years old what the next 12 to 14 years of that guy's life was like. Not only was it not encouragement, it was just belittling. So the third thing I want to say that we've got to do for our kids is we do have to hold them accountable.

We can't be their buddies and we can't helicopter over them and not let them skin their knees or get a busted lip or fail a class or pay the consequences for four actions. But the other thing is we got to love other thing is, we got to love them unconditionally. And we got to mentor them. And we got to encourage them. There's a beautiful fine line when you're able to hold your kid accountable to not helicopter them. But when they lay their head on bed at night, they still know they are loved and they still know that they are valued and they still know that even though they messed up that today's tomorrow's another day and they can do better.

That fine line is where great parenting happens. That fine line is the difference in a kid being sad and being happy. And that fine line is a difference in a kid understanding sad and being happy. And that fine line is the difference in a kid understanding that good people make mistakes all day, every day. And smart people fail. But the good news is about the sun coming up the next day and the air blowing into your lungs is you got another chance to ride it. So, don't helicopter. Don't be your kids' friends. Hold them accountable. But certainly love them unconditionally.

Always encourage them and always mentor them and let them learn from their mistakes. And if we all did that, I just believe teachers would want to come back to the profession. And I just believe people would enjoy being in school because the kids would be armored the kids would be equipped with the right fundamentals to achieve in school the last thing I want to say about this shop talk suggestion from Keith is this. There has been policy put in place in the last 10 years that I do believe is destructive. And it is a policy that basically says if you're from a certain socioeconomic or class of people, that regardless of what you do, we've got to keep advancing you. It's just so destructive. Now this is why I said at the beginning of this shop talk, it may be a little difficult

because this does veer into the politics a little bit that I really do try to stay away from but guys who cares What what area you come from? What you look like how you vote? Who cares about that if you're a kid that's messing up you need to be held accountable If you're a kid that's messing up and you're failing, you need to be failed. If you're kids that's not doing right and you're

causing disturbances for other people in the classes and you're making administrators and teachers jobs miserable, you've got to be disciplined. Period. The 30s, 40s, and 50s in this country were, schools were filled with very, very, very poor people. But we held kids accountable. We failed them. We required certain par levels for them to advance. And the kids that grew up and had problems, it wasn't because the school was too tough on them. That's just ridiculous. There's common sense policy that says,

if you're a kid that's messing up in school, you're going to be held accountable. And if you continue, you're going to be disciplined. And eventually, most of those kids will take that discipline and that accountability and get themselves right. But if you just continue to say, oh, because you're from this area or you're poor or you're this, we're just going to let it slide. And if you continue to reward schools for advancement and graduation rates, rather than for promoting based on reaching levels of certain par levels that you've got to reach to be able to be promoted and advanced to the next grade. If we're rewarding schools not for educating, but for promoting,

and if we're rewarding schools not for disciplining, but for coddling, man, that scares me. That scares me what 20, 30 years from now looks like. Like I said, I don't want to get too deep in it. There's plenty of stuff online that you can Google about the last 10 years or so policies in the world of education regarding what I'm talking about. And might do you some good to Google it and read up on it. I think you might be surprised. So Keith, thanks for Shop Talk suggestion number 30. Number one, don't be a friend to your kids. Hold them accountable.

Number two, don't be a helicopter parent. And number three, give them unconditional love and support and encouragement. And if you can do those things, hopefully you can avoid being a crappy parent. That's Shop Talk number 30. And if you can do those things, hopefully you can avoid being a crappy parent. That's Shop Talk number 30. I'm Bill Courtney. Thanks to our producer, Ironlight Labs. For Shop Talk suggestions.

For Shop Talk suggestions, would you please email me anytime at bill at normalfol dot us and if your suggestion has something in it that i think i can add value to i'll comment on it and if it's not i'll at least email you back and say hey i'm unequipped to to do anything with it but send me suggestions we like to interact with you on this stuff so shop talk number 30 don't be a crappy parent. Thanks to our producer, Our Light Labs, I'm Bill Courtney. We'll see you next week. Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show,

where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everyone, it's Katie Couric. Well, the election is in the homestretch,

right in time for a new season of my podcast, Next Question. I'm bringing in some FOKs, friends of Katie's, to help me out, like Ezra Klein, Jen Psaki, Esthed Herndon. But we're also going to have some fun fun thanks to some of my friends like Samantha Bee and Charlemagne the God. We're going to take some viewer questions as well. I mean, isn't that what democracy is all about? Check out our new season of Next Question with me, Katie Couric, on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, y'all.

I'm Maria Fernanda Diaz. When You're Invisible is my love letter to the working class people and immigrants who shaped me. Season 2 shares stories about community and being underestimated. All the greatest changes have happened when a couple of people said, this sucks. Let's do something about it.

We get paid to serve you, but we're made out of the same things. It's rare to have black male teachers. Sometimes I am the testament. Listen to When You're Invisible on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Had enough of this country? Ever dreamt about starting your own?

I planted the flag. This is mine. I own this. It's surprisingly easy. There are 55 gallons of water, 500 pounds of concrete. I own this. It's surprisingly easy. There are 55 gallons of water 500 pounds of concrete. Or maybe not. No country willingly gives up their territory. Oh my god. What is that? Bulls. Listen to Escape from Zakistan. That's Escape from Z-A-Q

Estan on the iHeart radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.