by John D. Fixx
Head of School
Head of School
Even though our children are in college and post-graduation, we still play family board games during holidays. While losing a recent game of Chutes and Ladders to my son, I noticed on the board that the tops and bottoms of the ladders and chutes are decorated with instructive pictures. The ladders, which help fortunate players move sharply forward, have pictures depicting children being responsible and helping others: cutting the grass, freeing a treed cat, returning a lost item and doing homework.
Discouraging inappropriate behavior, the pictures accompanying the chutes capture children involved in more perilous behavior: eating a box of chocolates, raiding a cookie jar, pulling a cat's tail.
The lesson seems clear at first. Improper comportment is disadvantageous, while proper behavior is rewarded. But this "exciting up-and-down game for little people," it turns out, is more complicated than that. There is a spinning arrow that determines how many spaces forward a player may move. The arrow, then, not a player's behavior, determines whether one lands on a safe square, a positive ladder or a negative chute.
Consider what the arrow represents. Life's unpredictable parceling out of serendipity and disappointment is something we all experience. Chutes and Ladders conveys to our children that we must try to do the right thing; however, we may still be rewarded even when we are dishonest and might, alas, encounter set-backs for reasons of pure chance.
I thought of Chutes and Ladders yesterday while talking with a student who had been called on the carpet by a teacher. This student's response – we have all used it – was that others were breaking the same (minor) rule but nobody caught them.
To the student I explained that our concern was with this particular episode of misbehavior and with the formation of the student's integrity and character. I reassured the student that if others did not learn a cheap lesson from this mistake, they would some day receive the same consequence. When a police officer hands us a speeding ticket, I offered as an analogy, we may feel sorry for ourselves or be angry, but we understand the police cannot catch all lawbreakers. They can, however, try to correct the behavior that time and circumstances allow.
One of our goals – as parents and teachers – should be to reassure our shared young people that, more often than not, correct behavior is rewarded and inappropriate behavior is unproductive. But we also need to help our children understand that there is, thankfully, a refreshing unpredictably to our daily lives. Sometimes we are unfairly damaged out of proportion to a misstep but other times, we reluctantly admit, we get applause we don't deserve and rewards without fully earning them.
The powerful lesson for our children is that their happiness and satisfaction as children and as adults are determined not by what challenges and vicissitudes life throws at them but by how they react to circumstances. Rather than complaining about which direction the wind is blowing, satisfaction in life is determined by our ability and willingness to adjust our sails.
