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Lead Them And They'll Find Their Way

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By D'ANN LAWRENCE WHITE | The Tampa Tribune

Published: March 9, 2009

Brandon - Poor Dr. Jeremy Poole.

I still can see the stunned look on his face as I sobbed and hugged him, leaving a trail of mascara all over his formerly white doctor's coat.

He'd just told me that I was pregnant, words I never thought I would hear.

I'd been told my chances of having a child were slim to none due old scar tissue. So my reaction was a bit out of the norm when Dr. Poole made his surprising announcement 11 years ago.

I was 35 years old; my husband 41. We were pretty much resigned to life without a child. We chalked my pregnancy up to nothing short of a miracle.

Because of my age, doctors recommended I undergo amniocentesis. We agreed to the procedure only to prepare ourselves for any problems we might encounter when our child was born. It didn't matter if our child was born with Down syndrome or any other birth defect. We were prepared to treasure this baby regardless of any special needs. This child was truly a blessing.

However, we did settle on some guidelines to raising him.

We vowed we would never pressure him to be an all-star baseball player or straight-A student. After all, intelligence and athletic prowess are qualities you're born with. Whether you believe they're inherited or God-given, they're out of a parent's, and a child's, control.

My heart goes out to a child whose parent berates him for not swinging the bat correctly or for getting a B on his report card. We agreed to encourage our son to do his best but not set our expectations beyond his abilities.

There are qualities a parent can and should nurture in a child, however. In a letter to our unborn child, we wrote down a few of the traits we hoped to instill in our son.

We hoped our child would grow up to be kind, loving and forgiving, to respect others, to take life's problems in stride, to have a sense of humor, to be honest and act with integrity when he's wrong, to be empathetic and generous toward those who are less fortunate and to not fear trying, even if he doesn't always succeed.

If he grows up possessing those qualities, we agreed we'd accomplished our job as parents.

I recalled that letter recently as I read through a book my son's classmates compiled discussing his "character traits." Throughout the year, his fourth-grade teacher asked each student to write about fellow students' qualities, such as loyalty, self-control, honesty, leadership, trust and fairness. Then, at the end of the year, she presented the bound collection to each student.

I chuckled at some of the comments. They could just as well have been written about me.

"When Ian believes in something, he isn't scared to tell his mind."

"He stands up to people when they're wrong."

"Ian is always telling us what the right thing is. He will speak his mind."

I was a bit surprised to discover that my son has cast himself in the role of a peacekeeper, trying to help resolve disputes on the playground or cheering up another child who feels dejected.

"Ian sticks up for others." That comment included a little cartoon of two kids fighting and a third child, Ian, I assume, standing over them. In a balloon next to his mouth are the words, "Stop fighting."

"Ian shows leadership by stopping fights and helping people get more friends."

And my personal favorite: "Ian is like a live little conscience that is watching you everywhere you are and whatever you're doing." That statement came from his precocious classmate, Libby Feaster.

I could see that our efforts to instill the virtues of honesty and integrity paid off.

"If he does something wrong, like talking in class or in the line and teacher asks who's talking, he says it was him. Ian is always ready to confess."

Actually, a number of the children wrote about how quick he is to admit when he is doing something wrong and take his punishment, especially when it prevented another child from taking the blame for his crime. I found that pretty impressive.

"He tells Mrs. Larsen that he's talking during class when Mrs. Larsen thought James was talking," wrote one classmate.

Yes, my son exhibits many of the qualities we vowed to nurture when he was born nearly 11 years ago, as well as a few we hadn't anticipated.

Nevertheless, my son is definitely his own person with abilities and personality traits we could have never predicted.

While I was spelling bee champion of Pierremont Elementary School and began composing short stories at the age of 7, my son gets average grades in spelling and groans whenever he has a writing assignment.

My husband was a quiet, well-behaved kid, the perennial teacher's pet.

However, our son, as exemplified by his classmates' comments, is anything but quiet. He's never met a stranger. At his preschool graduation, the other children received awards for "Best Helper," "Most Cheerful" and "Best at Following Directions." My son received the dubious award for "Most Irrepressible, " hardly the title of the teacher's pet.

By the same token, he has a larger vocabulary than most adults I know and was off the charts in standardized testing for knowledge of social studies. His favorite channel is the History Channel but I've seen him equally engrossed in Fox News.

Only time will tell what direction his life will take. At various times, his career choices have ranged from politician to pope.

His most recent aspiration is to attend the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs so he can learn to fly a plane. However, he doesn't plan to use his flying skills for war, he tells us. Instead, he'll become a general and then plans to be assigned as a presidential envoy and help further world peace.

OK, Mr. Peacemaker. I can live with that.

D'Ann Lawrence White is a columnist and reporter for The Tampa Tribune.

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