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I have 3 kids, all adults now. I have 2 stepdaughters whom I raised. They are mine… and then I have their little brother, my youngest son. Parenting wasn’t always easy, but in the grand scheme of it all, they all were pretty good kids. Each unique, each special, each very much valued!
In this blog, though, I want to focus on my oldest daughter.
When I came into her life at the age of 8 she was almost a grown-up already. Her mom was a single mother trying to work and raise her and her sister at the same time. My daughter had to bear some of the responsibility of looking out for her younger sister who was six years younger. When I first met them, I fell in love with them right away as we played “kitchen” with their toy kitchen set. I think I drank a hundred make-believe cups of tea that night! I will never forget it!
Eventually, I was privileged enough for them to call me Dad. It was never forced on them and eventually came naturally. Their biological dad was always in their life, but to his credit, he allowed me to raise them for which I will be forever grateful. Too many times you see a step situation going horribly wrong as adults will be at each other’s throats only at the expense of the kids being used as pawns. Thankfully, I was blessed with this not being the case and I could love them like my own.
As my daughter got older, we did have our head butts. She grew up wanting to be able to do whatever she wanted when she wanted, but our house had rules. They weren’t crazy rules, but still rules nonetheless, and they were going to be followed. I demanded that our kids respected us, that we were their authority as their parents, and that they understood how much we sacrificed for them. That sacrifice would not be met with a slap in the face or lack of consideration on their part when it came to their mother and me. We worked way too hard to let our kids rule over us! We were given the responsibility to raise them, surely, not the other way around.
During this time, my daughter was struggling with her grades in 9th grade. Education was big in our household. It wasn’t so much the grade you brought home, but the work you put in. If we knew you were working hard, then the grade didn’t matter. However, if we knew you were slacking off, that would not be acceptable. One of the ways to know the effort being put in was to bypass the grades themselves and look at the teacher’s comments. Those were very telling what kind of effort our children were putting in, let alone what we saw at home.
With my daughter struggling, I had to find a way to help her. I knew she was slacking. She was getting punished for lack of effort in school and I had to find a way to reach her. So, I sat her down to have a chat with her. A heartfelt chat that I hoped would resonate.
I said to her, “You know, you are struggling in school and it’s getting you in trouble here at home because of it. It’s not because you can’t do it. It’s because you aren’t putting in any effort and that needs to change. You are way smarter than what you are showing.”
She replied, “Dad, school is just hard.”
I knew this wasn’t the case. She was a smart kid. It was only hard because she failed to try.
I responded, “The reason it’s hard isn’t because school is hard. It’s because you don’t care. Let me explain.”
I continued, “Listen, when you don’t study or prepare for a test, how hard do you think that test will be? Pretty darn hard! If you didn’t study or prepare you won’t know how to answer the questions, so yeah, that makes it very hard to do well on that test. School then becomes very, very, difficult. However, if you care enough to study and prepare, then, when you go into a test, all of a sudden, the questions become very easy because you know the answers to them. Now, school starts to be very easy. The only difference between the two is the level of care you put into it! If you care, school becomes easy…but if you don’t care you will struggle through school, and it will be hard.”
At the time, I had no idea if that would take hold with her or not, but I was trying everything I could think of to get through to her.
Speed up to 10th grade. My daughter starts the year doing very well. She brings home her first report card and everything looks great. I praised her for her effort. I praised her for the teacher’s comments that commended her hard work and attention in class. I told her how proud I was of her.
She said, “Yeah Dad, 10th grade is so much easier than 9th grade.”
I laughed. “It’s not that 10th grade is easier, my beautiful daughter… 10th grade is harder than 9th grade. However, it’s easier because someone decided they were going to care.” I smiled at her. She smiled back as if to agree with me without coming out and saying it. She was only in 10th grade, after all, so no way was she going to voice that I was right!
My daughter went on to do well in the rest of high school but then struggled in college as she went off to school. She let the college lifestyle get the best of her and her grades suffered because of it. She went through some tough times then…but through it all we loved her, even when showing her some tough love.
Speed up to today and my daughter is in her 30s. She took the longer, tougher road in many ways, but worked hard to get herself ahead. After she had established herself working as an adult, she came to me asking me if there was an opportunity to maybe work at the company I was working for. I was honored that my oldest daughter might want to work with her father at that same company. I would have never asked my company to give her an opportunity had I not felt she would work hard and thrive. She had proven herself. So, I went to my president asking if they would take a look at her and they did. A short time later, they hired her. Our company, unfortunately, doesn’t have the best training in the world and you either sink or swim. One day, we talked about the lack of training and my daughter told me, “Dad, I am just going to fake it until I make it.” She has now worked at my company for 7 years now. She is an absolute star at our company and does extremely well. When she was first hired, it was her responsibility to uphold my reputation for sticking my neck out for her to get her an opportunity. Today, I feel like I have to step up my game to uphold her reputation. She is that good!
What I’ve always admired about my oldest daughter was that she is a fighter! She has moxie. If you look up the definition of moxie, you might just see my daughter’s name next to it. Not only am I extremely proud of her, but in many ways, I even look up to her. She has grown up to be an outstanding woman and for that, I am forever grateful.
I hope that, if anything, this encourages you to not give up on your kids. No matter what they show you on the outside, they do listen. Sometimes it just takes time to see it. I have always said parenting is a “thankless” job. However, the reward is seeing who they become as an adult. Your fingerprints and influence will be all over their life. As much as my father was my idol, never once did I say to him growing up, “Keep up the good work of lecturing me and disciplining me, Dad, because I am soaking this up like a sponge!” No, instead I acted like he didn’t know what he was talking about…and now, if you ask my mom, she’d tell you I am a spitting image of my father. I am a product of him. In many ways, I now see my daughter as a product of me…whether she admits it or not!
Have Character!
J. Noah Russell
HAVE CHARACTER™
