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Welcome Visitors! |
Brad’s Odds N Ends | ||
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December, 2007 - Vol. 1, No. 5 |
Christians, Parents of Teenagers, and Teachers | ||
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Welcome! Small Summer is Here! What to do with the Kids?
Texas residents, Earn income on electricity bills and help others do the same. Find out more here. Small Communities The antique capitol of A tongue-in-cheek view of small town life Tell us about your small town. Accepted descriptions and pictures will be presented as reader articles and editorials in the Brad’s Odds N Ends newsletter. Send your submissions to the address below. Contact Us or Subscribe
Copyright 2007 by Brad Loveland |
College Bound! (page 2)
Our oldest child has never been a fan of tests, especially the standardized ones. So, when it came time to take the THEA online at the college branch in town, he sat down and finished quickly. According to the results, too quickly. He ended up taking some developmental courses. He enjoyed those classes since they were so much like high school, but they did not prepare him very well for the courses that were to come in the next phase of his college career. He was practically working full time and paying most of his own way, so we let him learn from his own mistakes. This is easier said than done. It is really hard to stand by and watch your ‘baby’ mess up royally and let it happen. Looking back, I think I would have done more to keep a relationship with him instead of letting him believe that we were so calloused as to not care that he was suffering and struggling with his values, morals, and ultimately his faith. We did try to let him know this and continue to remind him that we did love him. I wish I knew more about what he was going through at the time but, he began to distance himself from us and find out for himself the way that he should go. He had to find out for himself what faith that he would have and thereby choose values and morals to fit his faith. At the end of the year, he and some of his friends decided to transfer to a four-year college three hours away from us. He had other friends there that we knew came from good homes. So, we prayed and sent him. The very first thing out of the shoot was being placed in over-flow housing off campus because he had decided so late to transfer. The funding came late as well. So, he was placed with three freshmen who were younger than him and straight out of high school. They had never lived away from their parents and they had teenager sleeping habits. Later we found out that their classes started later in the day, and our son had to be up for 8 AM classes on school days. The very first Friday night in the apartment, there was a commotion outside the balcony where the pool was. Our son went out to see what the commotion was. There had been a drowning. A foreign student had been out swimming by himself and drowned. This affected all of the boys, but our son was ready to come home. We encouraged him and asked him to give it a chance. Things would get better as the semester started. And we began to pray. We brought this incident up to our congregation and we all prayed. Things did improve for a while. Our son has always needed his sleep and the drowning incident was still fresh on his mind. This and the teenager sleeping habits was not a good combination for him. So, we began to pray. A representative from the college called us one evening a few days later to ask us how we felt about our son’s experience at the university. My wife let them know that he really needed to move on campus with someone with a little better sleeping habit. A few days after that, our son called and said that he had moved on campus into one of the residence halls. Once again, our prayers were answered. Our son was struggling and we knew it, yet he wanted to take care of everything for himself. We wanted to give him his space. We wanted him to recognize when he needed to call home as well. We would wait to call until we couldn’t stand it anymore. He kept saying everything was fine. He just said that he had not gotten any of his work back, so he was not sure how he was doing in classes. At Christmas time, he got his grades and confessed that he had not really studied much. He had not read his economics book in particular and had failed the class. That was our opportunity to sit down with him and remind him what it was going to take to be successful. He was going to have to read and study his textbooks. He made his own grades; the professor did not just make them up. And once again, we wait and pray. Need extra cash to make ends meet? Brad Loveland is an:
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