Half-bottle parents
December 24, 2016 8:00 PM Kitchen, Boston, yellow sweater & duck pjs
I had a wonderful conversation with my mom tonight, at the scene of where we usually have our lit discussions: the kitchen room table.
I attribute my successful, though short, career so far as an engineer to two things: 1. quitting rowing and 2. failing my first Art History exam. It’s like if that drone never died in A New Hope, and Luke didn’t take home R2D2 with the death star plans — there wouldn’t have been Star Wars.
If I hadn’t quit rowing, I would have never taken computer science. I would have been too afraid of the time commitment. If I hadn’t gotten an F on my first ever art history essay, I would have been an art history major. Simple as that.
I thanked her for not being a helicopter parent: for never hounding me on grades at Dartmouth, despite how shitty they were. And while I started to go off about how progressive that was of her, she said that she only ever saw my freshman fall transcript and had never known any of my other grades. When I told her what grades I had gotten, she was shocked.
But what she said next I will remember forever: she never thought that grades in college meant anything. She said that getting good grades didn’t help you get a job, they didn’t help you get a promotion. That being a “bookworm” isn’t really a good thing. She said it was all about — it’s kind of hard to translate — but it’s all about discipline and personality.
She said that in her experience of failing to go to college then going to college then becoming a teacher, there were two types of kids who had a chance to succeed.
The first, a child with two intellectual parents who had the resources and knowledge to teach their child. That child would be smart, and would succeed.
The second, a child with — translated — “half-bottle” parents. That being, a child with a parent who is not educated, or with two parents who are not very educated. Those half-bottle parents leave their child be, they trust her and hope for her to learn from the world, since they feel the world would be a better teacher than they could possibly be.
The worst, she said, was when half-bottle parents are also helicopter parents over their child. She said for the child, “in their head”, they would never be able to learn or move on because they are so worried about their parents’ unwarranted concerns. This child would not succeed. She said if she had tried to educate me about the world, she would have made me “dumber than her.”
For my mom to think this way is the distilled essence of how very wise and humble she is. And I truly felt and feel thankful that this is how I was able to pursue life…free to make so many idiotic mistakes and learn from it all.