Are we paying attention to the right things?

At the beginning of this school year, when my 8th-grade son’s school district switched to a new parent information system, I inadvertently signed up for regular alerts instead of just the weekly summary email. So nearly every day I get an email informing me that my 8th-grade son’s test has been graded. Or that an assignment is due. Or that the teacher extended the due date for an assignment. I never open these messages, although I skim the subject lines and will sometimes mention to my son, “Your Spanish quiz was graded,” to which he inevitably replies, “I know, Dad, you don’t have to tell me.” Yet, I haven’t unsubscribed from these emails either. Perhaps I’m afraid of what will happen if I take away the power that comes with knowing nearly everything that my son has accomplished, or hasn’t, each day.

Eight years ago, when my older son was in 6th grade, and I was still the superintendent of the district where my kids were enrolled, I had a conversation with a mom on the sidelines of a soccer game about how goofy, sweet, smelly, and clueless our preteen boys were. I told her that I think middle school should be all about experiences rather than academics and suggested that maybe we should send our kids to the woods for a year or have them work on a farm or do major community service projects to build their executive functioning skills. She laughed and then asked me how often I checked his grades and assignments on the parent information system. Never, I replied. I didn’t feel the need to know what was going on every day unless there was a problem. My job was to create a safe, loving, stable environment for my kids, with clear standards and expectations, and his job was to do the right thing. Or, as I say to my kids every day when they leave the house, “work hard, have fun, be a good kid.”

The mom looked at me like I was speaking another language. I was, after all, the superintendent in a county where many parents obsess over every aspect of their kid’s achievement. She told me that she checked the system every day and then sat down with her son to plan out exactly when he would do every assignment and make up every bad grade. “Great,” I told her, “I’m glad the system is working for you and that your son is doing well in school.” And we went back to the game.