The Sanford Berenberg Experience: Message of the Day - Can't we just agree to be accountable?

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Message of the Day - Can't we just agree to be accountable?

Good Morning,

My family and I had a chance to visit a great indoor water park this past week. We arrived shortly before 11 AM in the morning and as we pulled into the parking spot, two school busses rolled up to the main entrance. So we all hurried a bit to beat the crowd. As we came to the reception area to purchase our tickets we overheard the busses had 66 children and 15 chaperones.

We entered the water park, and it was alive with activity. There was water pretty much everywhere from gigantic slides to huge jungle gyms with water dripping, spraying, and being poured everywhere. We scoped out a table and chairs for our stuff and a place to rest between rides or swims. Next to us sat two tables taken up by parents from the bus trip: some of the chaperones.

For a majority part of the day time they spent at the park, some three hours, about seven people stayed at these tables and talked to each other. From that vantage point you could only see about ¼ of the park due to everything going on throughout the park. My point being these chaperones could not chaperone from where they were sitting.

As I looked on from time to time, it made me wonder what was the point of having chaperones if they were not going to do anything but hang out and talk amongst themselves. Didn’t these people have an obligation to watch the children they were supposed to be chaperoning?

Then I wondered what was the lesson that these parents were giving these kids. The kids were probably told that adults were necessary to chaperone kids. That would seem to mean that they sit in the bus with the kids, and keep them all behaving during the bus ride, and then the adults disappear at the water park and the kids can do whatever they want, leaving the park lifeguards and attendants to ride herd on the kids.

So, the adults who were accountable for the kids, being chaperones, were sort of accountable, when they were on the bus and maybe before the water park, but not at the park.

This may all be nit-picking at a point I thought to be interesting. Or then again, if children’s beliefs and values come from watching and mimicking people they respect or look up to, then when we agree to do something, we should do our best to do it. So the lesson we give to the children is one that we want them to learn.

Accountability is a huge lesson to learn for kids today, but I often see kids who do not show it and worse may not even know what the word means.

When we agree to be accountable for something, we need to do more than just agree, we need to live up to our obligations.

Young eyes are watching us, and learning from us, lets be sure to give the right lesson.

Enjoy!

Sanford Berenberg

Sanford@berenberg.net

http://www.berenberg.net