I Trust You'll Treat Her Well

I have a guilty pleasure that I probably shouldn't indulge in, but I listen to 106.1 KISS FM (the talk show portion) in the mornings on my way to co-op twice a week. Yesterday was the first day back to school for most of the North Dallas area and as per a tradition on the show they read a poem called "I Trust You'll Treat Her Well". I really expected a mushy poem about how his little girl was growing up and all that other mush that comes along with it (don't get me wrong, I love mush!), but what I heard was actually HORRIBLE! I honestly can not believe that this poem is a comfort to anyone. In fact I turned it off after a few lines because it made me want to cry for anyone sending their daughter(s) or son(s) for that matter, into this enviroment that produces such awfulness! Now, please don't take this as an attack on public schools. This is purely about the way this poem makes them sound.

Trust You'll Treat Her Well World, I bequeath to you today one little girl in a crispy dress.. with two blue eyes...and a happy laugh that ripples all day long, and a batch of light blonde hair that bounces in the sunlight when she runs. I Trust You'll Treat Her Well.

She's slipping out of the backyard of my heart this morning and skipping off down the street to her first day at school.

Prim and proud, she'll wave a young and independent hand this morning, and say goodbye and walk with little-lady steps to the nearby schoolhouse...

Gone will be the chattering little hoyden who lived only for play, and gone will be the delightful little gamin who roamed the yard like a proud princess with nary a care in her little world.

Now, she will learn to stand in lines...and wait by the alphabet for her name to be called...

She will learn to tune her little-girl ears for the sound of school bells, and for deadlines...

She will learn to giggle and gossip... and to look at the ceiling in a disinterested way when the little boy across the aisle sticks out his tongue.

Now she will learn to be jealous...and now she will learn how it is to feel hurt inside...and now she will learn how not to cry. No longer will she have time to sit on the front porch steps on a summer day and watch while an ant scurries across a crack in the sidewalk...

Or will she have time to pop out of bed with the dawn to kiss lilac blossoms in the morning dew. Now she will worry about important things...like grades...and what dresses to wear...and whose best friend is whose. Now she will worry about the little boy who pulls her hair at recess time... and staying after school...and which little girls like which little boys...And the magic of books and knowledge will soon take the place of the magic of her blocks and dolls.

And she'll find her new heroes. For five full years I've been her sage and Santa Claus...her pal and playmate...her parent and friend. Now, alas, she'll learn to share her worship and adoration with her teachers (which is only right).

No longer will her parents be the smartest, and greatest in the world. Today, when the first school bell rings, she'll learn how it is to be a member of the group...with all its privileges, and, of course, its disadvantages, too.

She'll learn in time that proper young ladies don't laugh out loud...or keep frogs in pickle jars in bedrooms...or watch ants scurry across the cracks in a summer sidewalk...

Today, she'll begin to learn for the first time that all who smile at her are not her friends. That "the group" can be a demanding mistress... and I'll stand on the porch and watch her start out on the long, long journey to becoming a woman.

So WORLD, I BEQUEATH TO YOU TODAY ONE LITTLE GIRL in a crispy dress, with two blue eyes, a happy laugh that ripples all day long, and a batch of light blonde hair that bounces in the sunlight when she runs. I TRUST YOU'LL TREAT HER WELL. By Dan Valentine

So you tell me. Is that the world you want your gifts from God going into at the tender age of 5 and coming out of 13 years later? I'll Pass.

This sounds like an ode to smothering, helicopter parents.

While I support home schooling, I detest the idea of parents who both want their children to be their clones, and want their children to accomplish what they, as parents, failed to do and have long regretted.

Because either path is harmful beyond measure to children, who need their own purpose for being, as individuals, and need and will have to venture out in a world unsympathetic at best, and hostile at worst.

It is wise to protect children from harm, but foolish to defend them from their mistakes, to hide them from the truth, to cocoon them and never let them emerge in flight. To confuse a superior education with a life.

I once watched with sadness a girl just entering college, who had been raised in isolation, and to only enjoy what her parents enjoyed: their music, their culture, their isolation. But thrust out into the world, her stay was brief, before she met some gutter punks.

They could not have been more different from her than space aliens. Their lives, their experiences, their everything was unknown to her, and she felt compelled to discover it, to unveil the “lie by omission”.

She quit school. She moved into an apartment with them and tasted of their vices. Eventually she went on a road trip of alcoholism a thousand miles removed. Even the wiser of the gutter punks said that she would continue this way until she had hit rock bottom. He was correct.

A stiff price to pay for learning the truth denied her. She survived, but will never speak to her parents again.

A more unfortunate child became the focus of his mother’s obsession with music, her own failing, and she drove him to become a cellist, using deep and perverse means to force him to practice, evil psychological tools on her own child to fulfill her ambition.

His final message to her was to smash his cello to pieces then hang himself. No reason to leave a note. Such ambition for a fifth grader.

I believe she had another child, to replace the one who failed her.

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