For him it is the realization that those things that matter most in life require hard work and discipline.

 

For me it is the realization that I should not and cannot micromanage my son's path to success.

 

One of our friends responded to the news of his lost scholarship by saying: "I thought he was quite bright and very successful in high school."

 

He is bright (no need for the qualifier "quite").  He was successful in high school.  A significant part of his success was due to me and to my consistently making sure he was doing his homework and focusing on his grades.

 

When he went to college I decided that no longer could I check in with him about his daily progress.  I needed to let go and I did.  A lot.  Really.  Seriously.  More than I or others who know me might have imagined.  And what was the result?  He lost his scholarship.

 

The wrong lesson to take from this experience?  I should have continued to check in with him regularly and insisted on academic updates.

 

Why is that the wrong lesson?  It would have been less stressful and potentially less costly. 

 

Here's why.  As a result of losing his scholarship we discussed his commitment to his education and challenged him to consider whether he was serious about returning to the same school next year.  We set expectations of him for this summer - ones that he would manage - and they included working one full-time job and an additional part-time job.  He faced the poor decisions he made and wrote a scholarship appeal letter that outlined his culpability and commitment to improvement.

 

I KNEW he needed to mature and I was right.  But, and this must not be lost in the experience, I needed to mature as well.  I could have chosen not to mature, stunted his growth, and avoided this entire debacle.  In my choosing to grow, he has had to face and respond to his own need for maturity, and learned a powerful lesson in the process.

 

Sometimes you KNOW the other person needs to mature (and you are right), but you also need to mature as part of that process.  You can avoid failure by failing to mature or you can learn from failure while maturing. Neither option sounds great, but the latter is better in the long run and that's ultimately how one's life will be judged - by the long run.