I Never Looked At A Report Card

(and other things I may have done wrong raising children)

I’m the father of a recent high school graduate and I want to spend the week writing about what that experience has been for me. I have no idea if we have raised our daughters well. There are acts which I am proud of and many I am regretful about. All the same, people frequently ask Rochelle and I about our approach to child-rearing. Most of these questions involve how we choose to educate our girls, the freedoms we give them (live picking their own secondary schools), and the restrictions we enforce (like NO social media).

There is no one, single, and right way to raise children, I don’t care what anyone tells you. I can also tell you that, as a former youth pastor that 90% of children turn out as adults pretty close to the way they were raised. That is to say, parenting matters. And it matters more than culture, friends, church, social media, mentors, and everything else we like to credit or blame for the way our children turn out.

Parents matter.

Because my wife, Rochelle, and I worked with adolescents before we had children, we spent a good bit of our pre-parenting time thinking about how we wanted to raise our children. One thing we agreed on was that we would never look at report cards. Never looking at report cards, however, does not mean we didn't care or know how our daughters were doing in school. We did. We decided to let them report to us how they were doing in school. And not at the end of the semester but every day or week, allowing them to determine what to tell us when.

Our girls have heard me say, “I’ve already passed X grade this is up to you.” It was our desire for them to take their grades serious, not their parent’s perception of their grades seriously. And it was for this reason that when our girls achieve and accomplish academically — whether in the classroom or in their extra-curricular activities - their successes are their own. Proverbs encourages parents to raise their children, not control them. Like growing anything, the one who tends to its care is called to create the proper environment, but they cannot force growth.

So, why did we decide to never look at report cards?