What kind of grades are your kids making?

Stand around the parenting section and you will hear the talk begin. Oh, he has an A in Honors Chemistry but that B he has in Trig better be an A by the end of semester. She made the Honor Society with her grade point average. I don't know how she keeps her grades and keeps her level of activity going. Don't worry, I have done the very same thing. We parents want the validation that our kids are turning out okay based on the grades they are making in the classroom. I often have measured my level of guilt or concern based on tests, Act stuff, projects, etc. Are we concerning ourselves over what kind of grade our kids would get in the character department? What about integrity? What about the person they are becoming? What if you took away your kids good grades? Is that basically all you can say is their accomplishment? Or do you really know? What if you had to grade your teenagers character? What if your teenager had to give you a grade? We parents allow ourselves to be sucked into the vacuum of false security when we feel good about schoolwork and become less concerned with what's inside our young person's heart and mind. With our son's college years just around this summer, I am less concerned with his final grade point average and more concerned with his journey into the battlegrounds of who he is, what he is and where he is going. The tools he will need for this job have been tested along the way. Can he stand up for what he knows to be the truth? Can he remain confident when others are looking for him to fail? Can he say No and keep on walking? Can he remain concerned for mankind, while keeping his perspective? Do we parents who recite our kids grades so proudly, have any idea what condition their hearts are in? Maybe we need to take our eyes off of the semester progress report and start developing areas in our kids lives that are more valuable than that Trig grade.