Series on Parenting

by Deborah Hansen

No Excuses

Everyone had gathered in the small, cramped room for the parent-teacher conference concerning one of my students, a teenager with no impulse control and a bad attitude. My grade book rested in front of me, proof that homework was never done and the test grades that reflected his lack of effort. As I presented this information to his mother, she barely waited for me to finish before offering the excuse that had apparently worked so well for her in the past.

“Well, I’m a single parent,” she announced, her demeanor one of exhaustion and resignation. She stopped and let her glance move from me to the guidance counselor, quickly passing over her son, and then came back to me. She seemed to be finished speaking, her words practically visible on the table as her talisman.

Years ago I was caught off guard by these words that are routinely offered by many single parents, but it doesn’t surprise me any more. My tenure as a teacher has taught me to expect anything, both from young people and many adults.

Instead, I nodded and smiled. I then explained that I knew how tough it was to raise a child alone, because I was a single parent, too, with a teenager at home myself. At this point in such a conference it was like watching a balloon deflate. The parent realized that those well-worn excuses weren’t going to work with me. Sometimes they rephrased the same message, perhaps thinking that I hadn’t understood what they had said: “His father (mother) isn’t involved in his life,” or “I have to work two jobs to keep up and I just don’t have time to make sure his school work is done,” or even “Isn’t that YOUR job?”

Our children take their cues from us. We’re supposed to be teaching them how to survive in an often hostile world, and teaching them to fall back on excuses for poor behavior or non-performance isn’t acting responsibly as a parent. As tired or frustrated or emotionally drained as we might be, we simply cannot take the easy way out by deflecting the responsibility that is truly ours. If we do, our children will be crippled for life, limping from one disaster to the next, never maturing to the point of being able to handle whatever life throws at them.

We also need to call other people on it when they offer the same excuse for us. I don’t need well-intentioned people making allowances for me and my children merely because we live in a separated family. Children don’t get divorced; parents do, and parents are the ones who need to pick up the slack that is the result of their decision. This doesn’t eliminate the need for our children, however, to hold up their responsibilities as students and members of the community, responsibilities that are theirs regardless of the configuration of their family unit. Being a fractured family is a fact, not an explanation for all that goes wrong in our lives and the lives of our kids.

The conference that day continued as we all began to shift that mother’s glance from her to the teenager who needed to accept his role in the world as a contributing member of society. Hopefully, he got the message and can now hold his head high, knowing that we all carry many burdens. We just have to learn how to use those burdens as ballast to keep us anchored to reality instead of letting them drown us in self-pity and excuses.

-- June 2007

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Deborah Hansen is a veteran of divorced parenting, and a former middle school teacher. She is also a certified county court mediator, and a regular columnist for several parenting publications. She may be reached for comments and suggested topics at [email protected].

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