Parenting Advice From Joy Berry: President Obama’s Speech to Young People

There were a lot of things to appreciate about President Obama’s speech this week to schoolchildren. But as I watched it on TV, one particular section of the speech jumped out at me. It went something like this: You can’t let your failures define you. Instead, you need to let them teach you things that you need to learn.

The President reinforced his statement with several stories of very successful people, himself included, who encountered many failures along the road to success.

Obama elaborated on his own story by reminding the students of his “humble beginnings.” He talked openly about his father abandoning him at an early age. He told about his single mother being forced to work long hours in order to support her two children. And he told how these difficult circumstances prompted him to do things during his early years that he should not have done.

Nothing Obama could have said would have built a better bridge from the “now” to the “possible” for the young children to whom he spoke. As the TV cameras panned the audience, it became obvious that many of the students were struggling with similar situations and were understandably overwhelmed with having to figure out how to get from here to there.

Indeed, in all of the many years that I have dealt with young people, I have discovered that one of the biggest frustrations they face is figuring out a way to span the huge gap between their current situations and that of their parents. They have grown used to living with the benefits of their parents’ success and they don’t think that they can live without the benefits. Consequently they wonder and worry about how they will ever be able to maintain lifestyles comparable to the ones provided by their parents.

Obama’s message to the students, “Stay in school and try your hardest,” was an attainable first step—which is exactly what every kid needs. In fact, I almost cheered out loud when Obama declared, “There is no excuse for not trying.”

The President did a good thing when he addressed school children in the way that he did—not just for them, but for all of the adults who surround children as well. This is because we adults were reminded that the best place from which to approach a young person is not from a lofty pedestal, but from a human-to-human point of view.  That’s where adults become credible to kids, and that’s where adults can begin to reach out and be helpful.