Providing opportunities

The role of parents as providers of opportunities has long been established, and indeed one of the best predictors of a child's success in life is the success of their parents. The family provides the majority of the context were children grow up and develop and, compared to the school, which is a much more regulated environment, the home is the background for the exposure (or lack thereof) to a much wider variety of everyday experiences. From the religious feelings, to the entertainment and culture taste of the parents, children are imbued with a lot of different types of stimuli that, in the end, result in each kid growing in a certain way. And these opportunities that the parents provide are key to the final results. It is notorious how troubled children from privileged families will have the luxury of having several attempts at getting to their senses before they get in real trouble, whereas disfavored kids have one shot or might even get in trouble without any wrongdoing on their side, just by being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

With job opportunities the story is very similar. As we discussed a couple of days ago, these days connections are way more important in finding a job than a brilliant CV, and parents can be really helpful in getting you the right connections. From the help that their own friends can provide to the people you get to know because they sent you to a particular school, all this adds up to make a difference in the end.

But today I wanted to focus on a much more mundane kind of opportunity, which is not strictly limited to the parent-child relationship, but happens repeatedly there: an opportunity to make a pause and think.

Photo: evaero.com

In this time and age of continuous bombardment of news, emails, tweets, notifications, it is very easy to get lost in the turmoil, to feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of data to process, or even, like the proverbial Buridan's ass, to be unable to decide among the rich offer of (almost) equally appealing entertainment choices. This was the case with Trevor earlier this afternoon. After coming back to school and deciding to take the rest of the day "off", he spent a couple of hours on his own before he found himself without anything interesting to do: sure enough, there were plenty of things that he could do which were mildly interesting, but the problem was that none of the was enticing enough to stick out of the pack, so when he came down complaining that he was bored, I saw a golden opportunity for myself to give him pause.

When we were in the mountains with some friends in early August both Jason and Trevor had just had their birthdays so our friends, board game freaks as they are, gave each of them one small card game as a present, and the fact is that had not had a chance to try them out yet. I had already the instructions to Silver, which was Trevor's gift, so when I saw that he did not know what to do next, I asked him to play a round or two with me, and I was delighted to see that he accepted!

The beginning was a bit rough because I had had already sometime to reflect on the dynamics of the game and Trevor was just exposed for the first time, so naturally I took the first couple of rounds easily and he was on the verge of giving up, but then I brushed it off like "OK, now you know how to play, lets start from scratch" and he agreed to play a full game (four rounds), which he eventually won.

The takeaway message today is how happy I am that I managed to get him out of the whirlpool, offer him an unexplored option and make a success out of it. Now that I come to think about it, that is not much different from the experiences I got in my own childhood. I should probably thank my parents for that too. See you soon.