Archive for March, 2010

All business aside I want to talk about family to my visitors. My wife and I have are raising 3 children. Girls are still babies but our boy William has just turned 14 not long ago. So raise your hand if you have a teenager in the house and read on.

William is a great boy. He listens and knows not to answer back. Sure he has tried to test his boundaries every now and then. The trick there has been to never let him get away.  Every time he has tried such thing I gave him the long lecture of how a boy should respect his parents in order to get respect in the house. If you let them get away with it once or twice don’t be surprised when they stop listening.

Although he listens, I can’t say he has been that good with academics since he started middle school. As smart as he is there is not much that interests him about school work. Never did his homework on his own, studied or got in to the honor roll. Barely past 6th and 7th grade and he is now going to a learning center type school to make up for his failed classes in 7th grade and complete 8th to pass on to high school next year.  I must say this new school of his has done wonders in terms of results they have shown us. But it didn’t happen on its own. We put in a lot of effort setting up different rewards and punishments to shape him up to where he is today. Although he still messes around at times. For example, there has not ever been a single whole week where he got all satisfactory comments for each day from all his teachers until this very week (yes he brings home a card every day signed by each one of his teachers letting us know about his behavior at school on that day. A nice perk from his current school really.)

What was different about this week then? Well let me go back to a week ago Saturday when my good friend Mete brought over a 200cc dirt bike to our house. I have personally never rode a motorcycle in my life before. But for some reason, that day, the sun was just perfect, it was a nice warm day after an usually cold spring here in Daytona.  I said let me have a go, got on his bike and rode around the lake behind our subdivision. By the time I was back, there was William with his friends staring at me with that look of wanting to try it so bad. I know I was his age not long ago, and I used to beg my mom for a motorcycle and always got the no answer instead. But on that day, riding that bike around the lake gave me the best feeling I had in a long time. I let him try it out, showed him how to kick start it, hold the clutch, put it on to gear. He got it in no time and was having the time of his life on that thing. So that afternoon him and his friends took turns riding it on the back of our neighborhood through a utility roads track. While they were riding it I handed over Mete some money and bought the bike off him. He didn’t mind since he has only about 5 bikes left in his garage now. I decided to keep the bike and let William enjoy it if he came home with all good notes from school any day. However, before you know it, a police car was sitting in front of our house while some neighbors were giving our house number over the phone to them.

You know I’m a civilized man. You can come knock on my door and let me know the noise is bothering you and we would stop riding behind our neighbors houses (although a very fun utility works track is right there!). Personally I wasn’t even aware that it was making that much noise. It’s not like this is an every day thing. The weather was real nice and it was a saturday.  The kids were not inside the house playing Call of Duty all day long on their X-Box (yes they do that all summer when they should really be outside playing). I was in a great mood thinking this Bike thing could really do wonders for William in terms of school. But oh boy, one visit from the cop. Who was actually pretty understanding about the issue as he also enjoyed to ride when he was a kid however all that aside apparently our “freedom” does not extent to as far as riding a motor vehicle on a utility works track. He told us we could not ride back there and that he would have to come back if the neighbors phoned in a complaint. I guess you get mad, but once you realize you just got to swallow it and accept the fact that we are now leaving in a very different time in America, not so much the land of the free, but the land of the restricted.

Our Saturday ended not as great as it had started. Sunday rained. Monday came school. William comes home, all satisfactory grades. Begs me to ride it. I ask him to wait till I register it first. He begs and begs, and I finally give in knowing how bad I want to ride it as well. So I let him go up and down a different back track between houses for 10 minutes. Tuesday comes all Satisfactory, Wednesday and Thursday all Satisfactory’s. He comes home I let him sneak it out for a few minutes fearing the entire time that a cop is going to show up and spoil my day. Well for the first time ever, he brings in all Satisfactory grades for the entire week. He knows when it’s all good in school I’m going to let him have a few minutes on it. He loves it, cleans it, spit shines it and rides it.

I am a parent struggling to keep my teenager on the right track, and this motorcycle deal is working great. But it is not going to work long if the police keep showing up as neighbors keep calling. A shout out to all my neighbors, why can’t we come up with a working solution. Why forbid these kids from the fun of a motorcycle. Show them some respect. What if all these neighborhood teenagers volunteered to clean up the garbage that always piles up in the back ditches? Would you let them ride then? Because if the police keeps showing, I will have to get rid of the bike. These kids are only kids once. And look at all the good it has done for my William. These are the scariest ages for a parent. I know from my brothers. Once they get bored of not being able to do anything fun, they will start finding fun with drugs. William is a drug free boy. I want to do my part in occupying him with activities that keep him that way.