I always love the beginning of the school year; the vibrancy, the energy, and the enthusiasm of the students is infectious. Everybody in the community is excited to be back. It’s clear that Shipley’s sense of community is important to teachers, students, and parents—seeing so many parents at Back to School nights was very rewarding. I hope you found the nights to be worthwhile and reinforcing and that you and your children have a great year.

Like most of us, I am always taken aback the first time I experience something new. For me, having to close school in September because of weather felt incredibly bizarre.  Although there was damage in this area and many lost power, we were fortunate. Our decision to call school off early was out of concern for the safety and welfare of the community. We were apprehensive that downed wires and loss of power would hinder our ability to communicate with our families, faculty, and staff. Thus, I chose to call school off when I knew people could plan for it. In making the decision I also knew that if we did not get hit hard by the storm, it might seem to have been the wrong decision. (In fact, I actually hoped that it would!) You can only imagine the angst I felt when our youngest child woke up to sunny weather and said, “Daddy, I think you might have made a mistake.” As it turned out, of course, it was not possible to have school. Even when my decision is wrong, I will always err on the side of safety.

Over the years as a parent and educator I have found myself intrigued by the number of things we do for our children. Most parents I know, and I include myself, yearn to provide a better life for our children than our parents provided for us. We want their lives to be perfect. We’d like to prevent them from falling down or being hurt either physically or mentally. Ironically, in protecting them we can prevent them from learning lessons essential to life. If children are to be capable adults, they need to know how to deal with disappointment and adversity. We need to help them with this process. (A couple of years ago I recommended the book, The Lesson of a Skinned Knee by Wendy Mogel, which does a great job discussing this issue.)

In addition, as we strive to provide our children with better lives, we sometimes interpret better as more. In our haste to help them, we tend to give them more and more material things. As we do so, we also want them to have the character and values that we think are important. Of course, without realizing it, the messages we give our children are at times contradictory. The conflict our kids face is created by our ambivalent understanding of what is “better.”

As I discussed this topic with Bruce Miller, a psychologist and fellow Shipley parent, he made the following observation: “When we were kids, our parents seemed to define their success by meeting our basic needs and providing us with educational opportunities. As parents today, many of us are more concerned with making our children happy.” Implicit in his description is our need to give our children those things they want, not just what they need. Along the way, we have blurred the distinction between necessity and luxury, privilege, and entitlement. As we blur the distinctions, we confuse and confound our children. We run the risk of misleading our kids in their understanding of needs.

Although I do not know the answer to this dilemma, I realize the importance of coming to grips with it. A book that helped me put it into perspective is titled: Prodigal Sons and Material Girls: How Not to be Your Child’s ATM by Nathan Dungan. Although the book doesn’t say anything particularly new, it clarifies the issues at hand and provides some reasonable suggestions for dealing with the conflicts inherent in this discussion. It also clarifies the distinction between necessity and luxury (what we need vs. what we want) and provides strategies to deal with the challenges of parenthood.

Each time my wife, Sunny, and I confront a new stage in our children’s development, I have reinforced for me that parenting is the only profession in the world in which we expect people to be experts and in which all training is retrospective. When I see and experience the conflicts and potential difficulties of parenting, The importance of the partnership involving school, parents, and children is reaffirmed. Working together, we do a better job for our children. As the book indicates, it really does take a village to raise a child.

Our Strategic Plan is off to a wonderful start with over 80 adults involved in the process. I’m confident that it will provide clear insight and direction for our future. You will hear more about this from Cathy Drake and Tom Nammack in the near future. In fact, Tom will take a couple of minutes at the October 24th Heads’ Forum to discuss the process. In addition we will talk about some other issues relevant to the School. I hope you will be able to attend. The forum will be held in Beechwood; snacks will be available at 1:00 pm, and the program will begin at 1:30 pm.

With October fast approaching, we are looking forward to the Shipley Shops, which will run from October 22nd through October 25th. The Preview Party will be on Wednesday evening, Oct. 22nd  at 6:00 pm in the Yarnall Gym. I hope to see you there.

Warmest regards,

Steven S. Piltch
Head of School