Life experiences start early

My son has been struggling in robotics this year. After two years of having a friend be a partner, which turned out to be not the best kind of partner to have, he decided to try to go it alone. Unfortunately, his strength is not the mechanical side of robotics but the strategy side. Yesterday he informed me that he told the robotics teacher that he was stopping work on his robot and would do what he could to help the teacher and the class. I think that his teacher dealt with it at least reasonably well.

Many parents would consider what he did being a quitter. I do not see it that way. In my opinion, he made a very grown-up decision. It took a lot of guts to make the decision that he lacked the talent for the mechanical side and then to talk to his teacher about it. That is the kind of thing mature adults do. For me, this is a teaching moment, not a moment to belittle my son into continuing something he for which has lost the passion. The two lessons he can take away from this are, number one, going it alone is a very difficult task. It may seem like the easiest way to go in the beginning, but when you run into the obstacles in which you lack the talent for there is no one to take those over. Number two is the choice of a partner is critical to the success of a team. A friend for a partner may seem like the logical choice, but in the long run for a person like Collin, the importance of his friendship would take precedence over what he knew was good for the team and keep him from pushing for changes he thought needed to be made. Those are two lessons for a lifetime, which is what I try to teach my children, young adult children.

Everyone starts down many paths during the living of life. Some are the correct path, and some are not. The road to maturity is learning when you are going down the wrong path and reverse course. You cannot make up for the lost time, but if you learn lessons from the experience and apply those lessons in the future, it was not a waste of time.