Adventures in Parenting

“I used to walk 30 miles to school, in the snow, uphill both ways!”

🙂

We usually resort to saying things like that when we think that our children do not appreciate the easy life they have. We want to tell them that life is tough for some people, and that they should be thankful they have a car to ride in instead of walking 30 miles to school.

Well, even as adults, we often take for granted the good life we that we have. We wish for a bigger house, a nicer car, and better toys.

Today is Day 22 of our 30 Days to Better Parenting Challenge. Our task is to find an inspirational story that will prompt us to look beyond our circumstances. No matter what situation we are in, we can still excel.

Do a search on the internet and you will find some good inspirational stories to read together.

Here is an example of one you can read to your children:

Some people go through life without ever being able to read or write and that is a human tragedy. For decades, Jay Thiessens hid his painful secret of illiteracy even as he built his machine and tool company into a big business. By day, he was the harried executive, too busy to concentrate on contracts or other written documents. By night, he would sit with his wife at the kitchen table going over paperwork. His closest business associates had no idea that Jay was living with such a big secret. “I worked for him for seven years and I had no clue,” said Jack Sala, once his general manager. “He would bring legal stuff to me and say, ‘You’re better at legalese than me.’ I never knew I was the only one reading them.” Finally, Jay decided that he couldn’t keep his secret under wraps any longer. At the age of 56, having resolved to learn how to read, he went public with his problem.

Jay’s torment began in his earliest years of school in McGill, a small mining town in central Nevada. “A teacher called me stupid because I had trouble reading,” he said. From then on, he was always the quiet boy at the back of the room. Somehow, he graduated from high school, mostly getting C’s, D’s, and F’s. The day after graduation, Jay moved to Reno where, 10 years later, he started a small machine shop with his last $200. Today, his company-B & J Machine Tool Co.-specializes in welding, machine parts, and precision sheet metal. With 50 employees, it recently broke ground on a 54,000 square-foot expansion and brings in revenues of $5 million a year.

How did Jay stay afloat without being able to read or write? He compensated by being a good listener and by drawing on his strength with math and figures, a critical factor in the industry he chose. When Jay finally decided to do something about his illiteracy, he hired a tutor to instruct him for an hour a day, 5 days a week. Reading still does not come easily to him, but he continues to work at it. By making his story public, he hopes to encourage others to follow his example. “There is no shame in not knowing how to read,” says Bonnie Thiessens, Jay’s wife of 37 years. “The shame is in not doing anything about it.”

(From Delmar Cengage Learning)