When You Have To Choose Between Being a Benefit FOR Your Family and Being a Benefit WITH Your Family

Earthquakes, hurricanes, and a swarm of locust (okay, not yet for the last one).  As active as I have been in my local elementary school and middle school, I have made the difficult decision of stepping down as PTA President of Minnieville Elementary and PTO President of Woodbridge Middle School.  I had to make the determination, with all of my daughters' activities (both current and in the near future), to be there WITH them, instead of just FOR them.

What does that mean?  Hopefully my explaination will make sense (since I'm typing this on the fly).

My initial commitment to being so active at their schools (keeping in mind, I'm not TOTALLY fading into the background), was to ensure my girls knew how important their schooling was to me, and that their teachers should know that I will be there for them as well.  Then certain things started to happen; I started missing time at the dance studio, I started missing softball games/practices, I started missing family dinners; all for the "betterment" of my kids.

Is it more important to help out with homework or try to positively affect a school's program short and long term?  Is it more important to attend kid's sporting events or work in putting together an event that brings the school's community together?  Is it more important to have your child see you and just know that "Daddy is here" or bond with the school staff that work behind the scenes to make it happen?  For all this time, I was choosing the latter, believing that it would positively benefit my children by positively affect their school's community.  I still believe it to be true, but some of the time, or even most of the time, but nearly all of the time does not impact everything the way that I hoped.

There were many things that we were setting forth that would take our school to the next level, but does that matter to my family if grades start to slip?  Does the unity fully hold true when the unity in the household is impacted?  As difficult as it is for me to take a step back and re-evaluate my participation in the schools' volunteer system, I'm looking forward to what my girls have in store academically.  Next school year, Selena, my oldest, will attend her first year of high school and HOPEFULLY at the school of our choice (that is another BLOG subject at a later date).  So maybe I'll get re-charged and get involved with that school, if they will have me.

I never have faulted parent for not getting extra involved in their child's school, so hopefully no one will do that towards me.  See you around town and on the net.

Joe Gee aka DaBeast