Fundamental Keys to Raising A German Child as an American Child

One of the fundamental keys to raising an American child is to do what you want as a parent and allow your children to do what they want. Free yourself from our history, our culture, our good points and our bad points. Sometimes when you have a piece of fruit, vegetable or cheese that has gone bad you can save the whole by cutting out the bad spot. When you perform surgery on your fruit, vegetable or cheese inevitably a little bit of the good gets thrown out with the bad. Sometimes you just have to accept that you have to throw out the entire fruit. Similarly, with parenthood, you should not hesitate to act. Better to let some of the bad go than to ruin the whole apple. In other words, don’t be afraid to make mistakes. We all do and we all will. One of the proofs of proper parenting is if your children come to think that you’ve made a mistake and raised them poorly. A bad parent is one whose children think they were raised perfectly.

For example, my children are always complaining, so I must be doing something right. It is only when they are adults that we can really tell how good a job we’ve done. So far, Joachim, or Jack as he now likes to be called, is the most successful of my three children. He has reach third grade and has a lot of friends. His recorder playing is near the top of his class and he is pretty good at sports. He plays soccer and has been selected for an elite, travel team. He has also begun to play Lacrosse, which is a very exciting, locally popular game played on a field with sticks with little nets at the end to catch the ball. I have encouraged him to try baseball, but so far he hasn’t shown much interest. Perhaps we can get Charles, when he’s old enough, to play baseball or American football. Renate is also doing well in school and was even selected for the honors program. She is in first grade and always seems to be the center of attention. She is also playing soccer and has scored many, many goals.

Soccer, despite what Europeans might think, is very popular in America. Practically every kid in our neighborhood, Arlington, Virginia near Washington, DC, plays the game. When you drop off your kids at school, the play yard is filled with kids playing soccer, seventeen or eighteen to a side, if there is a side. The Spanish league teams seem to be the most popular. Cars sporting Barcelona and Madrid stickers are quite common. Our car sports a VfB Stuttgart sticker. Joachim wanted a Bayern Munich shirt. Richard told him that was never going to happen. He does wear the Cacao shirt Richard’s dad got him for Christmas.