When my daughter2 was in the 6th grade she got into some sort of very minor mischief at school, and as a consequence had to eat her lunch one day at a 'special table' up on the stage. Mischief sounds far more ominous than what actually occurred, and in fact I cannot recall now what even happened. I feel certain it involved talking when she shouldn't have been talking, but I think there may have been some hurt feelings along the way too.
Anyway, that's not the point. The point is this-I found out. To this day my now grown up daughter doesn't know
how I found out, but I think we can all acknowledge mothers have their ways.
She had never been in any trouble at school, and while the action was very minor my concern was the bigger picture. One bad decision often leads to another bad decision and that's a lesson some of us never seem to learn. I needed my daughter to understand that we make choices and there are always consequences, for good or ill, to the choices we make. I also wanted her to understand that when the people we interact with on a daily basis are making bad decisions, doing/saying nothing is every bit as much a choice as agreement. I don't want my children doing nothing when they can do something.
When my daughter came home from school that day she carried on as if nothing had happened, so I casually asked, 'Did anything interesting happen at school today?' She gave me some bit of unimportant trivia as middle schoolers and errant politicians are apt to do, but then I looked her in the eye and asked again, "Did anything happen at school today
that you'd like to tell me about?"
She
thought I knew, suspected but couldn't be sure, and I could see the wheels turning....'
How could she possibly know?' 'Did the school call?" '
Why would the school call over something so trivial?' 'Does she
really know or is it just my guilty conscience?'
As the wheels spun I added, "
Think really hard before you answer."
We've all been there, standing in my daughter's shoes in front of a parent, a boss, a taxpaying citizen of the United States, and run through our list of possible responses. Why is our first instinct almost always for denial instead of the simple or sometimes complicated truth?
My daughter weighed her options, put her head down, and spit out the facts.
More than ten years have passed since that day, and while I don't remember the details of what led to our face to face, I do remember this-
she didn't deny it. It was only in facing the cold hard facts that we were able to have an honest conversation. We looked at what led up to her making a bad decision, and how to avoid that the next time she's in a similar situation. There was genuine remorse on her part, and genuine forgiveness on mine.
Forgiveness comes so much easier when we deal in truths. When we don't have to wade through what is real and what isn't, what we can believe and what is being said to make a situation look less awful than it actually is.
Partly what led to the day's misfortune was the particular small group of girls my daughter had decided to hang with that day. They weren't her close friends, they were a handful of girls known to all the moms (and staff) in her grade as girls who tested the limits at every turn. My daughter was invited to sit with them that day, and while she told me she didn't actually do whatever it was they were punished for, she was guilty by association.
My daughter did try to tell me that what she got in trouble for wasn't nearly as bad as what X got in trouble for. Ha-does any parent ever buy that defense? My reply to that line is always the same...just because someone else did something you see as far worse does not mean what you did wasn't also wrong. We don't hold ourselves up to the lowest common denominator.
Note to 11 year old girls and people entrusted with our country's security, finances, and most of all, our trust-
who you surround yourself with matters.
We talked that day about what my girls will tell you is one of my favorite, and most used words in parenting, and in leadership-
perception.
It matters.
It matters when you're an eleven year old girl opting to throw your lot in with girls you know are on a teacher's radar, and it matters when you're the President of the United States and things are spiraling in a thousand downward directions around you.
I don't care if you're running a multi-million dollar corporation, the United States of America, or the local PTA...when you're the one in charge perception matters. You are it. The one. Where the buck stops whether you like it or not, asked for it or not, deserve it or not.
The one word I want most associated with my children and my husband and most of all, the leader of my country, is integrity. That word is defined as 'adherence to moral and ethical principles, soundness of moral character, honesty'. If a leader lacks integrity, what good is he/she?
Standing in my kitchen that day, in spite of my annoyance, something pricked at my heart. I realized that while I wasn't proud of what led us to the little tete-a-tete, I loved and respected my daughter's willingness to tell the truth. She owned up to her part in whatever happened, claimed responsibility for a bad decision, and for allowing the people around her to carry on without saying, 'hey that's not right'.
Our President and much of his staff could learn a thing or two from an eleven year old girl brave enough to stand eye ball to eye ball with a disappointed mother.
