Tad's Life

Middle School is tough. Well, not tough like it is hard to understand. Middle School requires a young man to do a lot more work than he was used to doing in 5^th grade! Today that meant going over “verbs” and “subjects” with Mom at the dining room table. Jonathan’s English teacher and his mother fortunately are not the same person! But unfortunately, they team teach the 8^th grade and work together a lot. Word got back that he didn’t really seem to have his grammar basics down pat like he needed to. He claimed it was because he was sick that day. Today he had to prove it to Mom.

What he’d rather have been doing, of course, was sitting at the PS/2 playing a game where he is a soldier in World War II fighting in North Africa. Shortly after the Mom quiz, having proved his grammar skills, he took on that military challenge. He now informs me that he has made it to Sicily.

So what do you do with that? Do you steer your child away from his boyish attraction to violence? Do you limit games to non-human violence? I hate parenting decisions like this.

But the most sobering thought of the week, the one that keeps haunting me, is that Jonathan will actually be soldiering age in only 7 years. Looking at the world scene, seeing the irreconcilable clash of visions between jihadist Islam and modern civilization, I don’t expect peace in my life time. And that means my son will grow up at a time when joining the military may seem to him the right thing to do. Several of our friends here have sons currently serving in Iraq, having chosen and sought to go, one for the second time. I work a lot with one of their moms, an old friend of ours. Jane is in a Bible study with the other. The thought that struck like a blow was that this could be our reality in just a few years.

There is nothing I can do, of course, to avoid this possibility. I want my son to act with honor and integrity and do what he believes is right. I want him to care. I wouldn’t want him to refuse to risk his life out of fear of death. Of course, I also wouldn’t want him to risk his life because his head was filled with foolish unrealities. May we have the wisdom to raise a boy into a man before it is time for him to decide such things!

// posted by Tad @ 8:27 PM