SkyView Academy Thursday Wire
September 10, 2026
“Prepare the child for the road. Don’t prepare the road for the child.”
Words to live by.
Over my 30-plus years in education, I watched from the front row as the pendulum swung from one extreme to the other.
When I first entered education, I often found myself in the hot seat. My mother raised me to pull myself up by my bootstraps and “get’er done.” Praise for success rarely left her lips. She reminded me constantly that pride causes problems. So, for the first few years of teaching, I did the same. I rarely, if ever, praised my students' success.
Extreme? Definitely.
I gradually realized how much withholding praise affected my students' morale and motivation.
Over time, I learned a balance.
Somewhere between 1992, when I first entered the classroom, and the present day, I realized balance was a rare commodity. The swinging pendulum and its flair for the dramatic became the norm, the expectation.
As parents, we often battle between wanting to protect our children and wanting them to stand on their own two feet, solid and steady.
I often find myself fixated on a topic for long stretches. Recently, during one particularly sleepless night, I found myself “doomscrolling,” as the seniors in my rhetoric class would call it, when I came across a video. I watched it three times, each time convinced it was satire.
Satire or not, I was stunned by what I was hearing.
In the clip, a mom shared a story from a parent group text. Another mother, whom I will affectionately call “Oreo Mom,” had asked the other parents to stop sending Oreos to school with their children. Her family did not allow Oreos in their home, and she did not want her daughter to feel left out or feel bad when other children had them.
Please do not misunderstand me. Every parent wants their child to feel included. We want to protect our children from disappointment, hurt feelings, and the sting of being different. That instinct is natural.
But I found myself wondering: Is our first responsibility as parents to make sure our children never feel left out, or is it to equip them with the confidence to stand firm when the people around them make different choices?
The Oreo request may seem extreme. It certainly left me dumbfounded, but also intrigued. But underneath something as seemingly insignificant as a cookie is a much bigger question:
Are we preparing our children for the road, or are we trying to prepare the road for our children?
The truth is, the road will not always accommodate them.
Someone will always have something they do not. Someone who is allowed to do something they are not allowed to do. Someone whose family believes differently, lives differently, spends differently, celebrates differently, or establishes different boundaries.
I would assert that it is not necessarily a problem to solve. Sometimes, it is an opportunity to grow.
“Oreo Mom” had an opportunity to teach her daughter something far more valuable than whether or not she could eat a particular cookie. She had an opportunity to say, “Other families make different choices, and that is okay. This is the choice our family makes.” She could have helped her daughter experience what it feels like to stand confidently in her family’s priorities, values, and expectations, even when others choose differently.
Instead, the solution was to ask everyone else to change.
That is where I think we need to challenge ourselves as parents and educators.
If we want our children to stand firm in their values, beliefs, and family expectations when the stakes are much higher than an Oreo, then we have to give them opportunities to practice while the stakes are still small.
Someday, it will not be a cookie.
It will be a party. A relationship. A substance. A social media trend. A choice made when no adult is watching. A moment when everyone around them is saying, “Come on. Everyone else is doing it.”
We cannot possibly remove every temptation, disappointment, uncomfortable feeling, or conflicting choice from our children’s paths. Nor should we.
What we can do is prepare them to walk those paths with confidence.
Parenting is not for the faint of heart. Sometimes loving our children means protecting them. But sometimes loving them means letting them experience the discomfort of being different and teaching them that they are strong enough to stand there.
Honored to Serve You All,
Janet Worley
Adult and Pediatric First Aid/CPR/AED Class
High School Students, may I have your attention, please? Do you need your CPR Certification?
On October 5th, Ms. Bishop is offering an Adult and Pediatric First Aid/CPR/AED class at SVA.
This class is being offered during a remote day in the afternoon so that you won't miss any classes. But it is technically during the school day.
There is an additional fee of $50.00 for the class. There is also an online portion that must be completed before 10/5.
If you are interested, please reach out to Ms. Bishop.
Thank you in advance for wanting to save lives.
