Helping your Children Dream Big

This transcript has been adapted from the attached audio. It may not be in its final form and may be updated.

HAROLD HARPER: Joe, thank you so much for taking the time to be with us today.

JOE WHITE: Well, Harold, thank you. It’s great to be with you. I’m looking forward to our time together.

HARPER: One of the things you’ve just mentioned, and I want to talk to you about that, because you mentioned dreaming and that kids need to dream big, it is okay to dream. Talk to us a little bit about that. Why do you think that is important for them to dream and what are some hindrances to them dreaming and is it important for them to dream?

WHITE: Well, Harold, if you want to look at teen America, and even younger and younger every year, pre-teen America, our kids are in trouble. If you want to cut to the chase and look at statistics, you know, America’s kids are in trouble. America’s kids are drinking younger and younger, and America’s kids are smoking, and America’s kids are doing drugs. A seventh grader in Denver at a public school was telling me that all of her friends are bi-sexual. I was just talking to a seventh grade kid a few minutes ago, and he was talking about how so many of his fifth grade friends now in seventh grade were starting to, as he said, “go south,” and I know what he is talking about. They are starting to get into making out with girls and drinking and sneaking cigarettes, etc., and, Harold, probably, and I’ve kind of been a pioneer of this idea, but probably the underlying reason behind so many of kids’ problems is they are bored. They don’t know what to do and also, they don’t have a challenge. Our nation, even in some of the more financially destitute sectors, have got more stuff and more Nintendo and X-box video games and more time is spent in front of the TV set to the tune of three to four hours a day, and we are not fighting, like we did growing up, to get a quarter for going and mowing peoples lawns, so that we could buy a snack once a week at school. Our generation, we grew up tough. In kids nowadays, there’s no challenge. So, what happens when you help a kid dream and when you help a kid take his talents and gifts and use them, whether it is band or basketball or art or debate, or whatever, it gives a kid something to do with their lives. It gives a kid a challenge. It gives a kid their own little war to fight, a good war to fight, a battle to fight.

HARPER: You are giving them the vision of the picture of what the child wants.

WHITE: It stimulates positive activity and you know, we are Christians and yes we go to church, and yes we pray at night, but unless a kid has a challenge in his life and a dream and a passion and goals, then the kid does, he gets bored and he loses his identify. Then when the little culture comes along that wants to start drinking and start smoking or start finding their identify in sex or whatever like that, then the kid, he is likely to gravitate in that direction.

HARPER: I want to camp out here for a minute. I love the last chapter in the book, “Making Sure it is Their Dream and Not Yours, Mom and Dad.” Talk about that a little bit.

WHITE: Well, it’s gigantic and everybody of sound mind as a parent knows that that must be true that when my youngster is playing football, it is not my football game. I was talking to a mom the other day and she is very outgoing and gregarious and very charismatic and pretty soon she is down on the field, coaching from the sidelines and whatever. It is the worst possible thing that you could do is to scream at coaches and scream at referees and to, all of a sudden, their life becomes your life. You know, at a game, I am the quietest person there is at a game. It is the cheerleaders’ job to lead the cheers, it is the coach’s job to coach, it is the official’s job to call the game. It is my job to admire and, sure, after the game, to be the encourager and to be the one who is there to mop up the tears and hug the pain. Yes, absolutely, I need to be in the stands, I need to be there, but I do not need to live my life vicariously through my children, and I will tell you, Harold, I meet some very bruised and battered kids whose parents dominate their dreams and the parent may be forty-five years old but they are still trying to be the school cheerleader or they are still trying to be the school football coach, or they are talking about their athletic successes and comparing their old athletic successes to their son’s failures, etc. It is absolutely devastating when a parent does that to a child.

HARPER: You know, I do a lot of discipleship and counseling of adults and you can see the imprint that mom and dad and those expectations are having and still adults are going around trying to live up to daddy’s dream or mom’s dream. Even as adults, if they are in their forties or thirties, or whatever it is, and they are still trying to do it. You are right, it makes an incredible negative impact on kids.

WHITE: I’ve got to shelve my stuff. I’ve got to shelve my needs for competitive expression or whatever and whenever my son or daughter is involved, it is all about them, it is not about me.

This For Faith & Family Insight has been produced by the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. Join the conversation at Insight.FaithandFamily.com.