John Cowan - Go to everything

Some parenting stuff is easy and fun, and some can be very, very hard, and what I am going to suggest today is in that hard category. The advice is, go to everything your kids do.

My wife and I have sat through hours and hours of tuneless droning concerts, weird plays and boring assemblies. The worst would be recorder recitals. I remember after one particularly dreadful rendition of “Ode to Joy” the music teacher said, “Good, good, now let’s hear it again without blowing.” I must say it made a big improvement.  

We have sat on those little chairs at the kindy risking snot and nits from strange children, sat with numb bums on hard forms in school halls and risked piles on the cold concrete bleachers at the local rugby fields.

I wouldn’t have immediately put these events in the ‘good old days’ category but I think it has been important to honour and attend the special events in our kids lives. They look for you in the audience. It matters to them. It says something to them about how you value them. I just did an involuntary shudder... I just realised: if I ever have grandchildren I will have to go to their concerts, too. I hope by then I will have hearing aids I can turn off.