Sometimes You Have to Bite Your Tongue

This is Connor's second year participating in the First State Jr. Lego League.  It is one of his favorite clubs to participate in. Grade school age students spend 2 months researching a topic and developing a structure made solely of Legos, reflecting what they have learned.  They must incorporate 1 movable part and one simple machine.  The season culminates in a competition where the students are judged by adults and their peers.  Every team is recognized for something.  I like it because it give the students the opportunity to learn teamwork and problem solving skills.  That is if the adults let them. 

There in lies the problem I keep running into with the kids' activities.  Last year's competition featured structures clearly built by very talented and educated adults.  These pieces, fascinating to behold, lacked the childhood charm of something constructed by 8 and 9 year olds. 

This year's competition was no different.  In fact it seemed worse.  Perhaps becuase we were packed into a smaller space and could not take hardly a step without encountering a  creation, a poster or a child in an official t-shirt.  Most adults were fine and stood back watching the kids put their hard work to the test, answering and asking questions.  Other adults could not resisit the temptation to step in and answer questions, or show how their movable part worked, while the kids watched, their fingers itching for a turn.

At one point the students were asked impromptu to build something in a short period of time that had to do with their project.  Connor's team of boys, not surprisingly built a stack of cookies and a laser gun delivery truck that pretended to shoot said cookies at people.  I marveled at how well they worked together.  They had really bonded as a team.  Then I turned around and found myself confronted by a parent who accused the boys of stealing legos that she needed.  In a huff she ran off to the Lego bin, pulling it aside so that she and her son were the only ones with easy access to it.  She sat, sprawled on the floor in a frantic rage of lunacy.  She began constructing what I can only say looked like the proto type to the Mars Rover.  Her son sat next to her, fingers itching to reach into the box and build whatever was roving around in his imagination but he did not dare move.  He knew Mom was at work and not to interupt.

I thought about recording this mother and posting it on facebook, mocking her lack of boundaries and inablilty to separate her son's success from her own.  Didn't she understand that her son is simply that, her son and not a part of her success at all, that he would be capable of his own success and failure if only she would let him.

 Haven't we all been there? To feel the pain of our kids and want to protect them from it, to want them to be a success becuase we somehow feel validated by it?  This mom had not yet learned that our kids need to sprout their wings, take a chance,  make bad decisions, fail, and feel stupid because failure leads to growth.  She did not understand that if we do everything for them, they grow up not knowing how to do anything and  once they go it alone, failure is their only option.

I decided not to record her. I did feel bad for her though.  Her masterpiece rover was complete and quite an accomplishment but  I wanted  to get a picture of the laser gun delivery truck before it finished shooting cookies and  got turned into something else.