What To Do When Your Son Disrespects His Teacher

Raising a Decent Human is Hard (Messed-Up But Managing #2)

Despite what you might’ve heard, there are training manuals for raising children. I own a few of them. I’ve even taken parenting courses. And not because I really just am that kinda guy—the one who has five degrees and gets goosebumps when he hears the word “syllabus.” For about four years, in fact, my wife and I have been enrolled in an ongoing parenting curriculum. Unlike the Bengals, we have a plan. And we work that plan. We are hardcore about it because, by and large, it keeps peace in our home. We knew we needed something years ago when that peace, like logic in a sentence started by Kamala Hariris, had come under threat.

Parenting, I have learned, is not something you just wing. In fact, keeping kids alive is just the first and easiest part. The real challenge is turning them into good people, people other people don’t hate. Whether you’re a parent or not, I assume that, to one degree or another, you can relate to that.

When you’re a parent, people tell you to cherish the little years and they lament how fast they fly by. And they’re right. But the middle years, those are a different ballgame, often ones you feel you’re losing. The days sometimes feel like life has taken you out back or, better yet, to the Muay Thai gym, and is relentlessly throwing teeps and switch kicks your way, only to catch you off-guard enough to get you in the clinch.

Case in point: teaching a teenager how to drive while you white-knuckle the door handle like it’s the ripcord of the last parachute on a doomed plane. And then, on that same day, having to explain—even though you absolutely should not have to!—that yes, shampoo goes on the scalp, and no, a five-second rinse does not count as a shower. Are we seriously supposed to let this child operate a two-ton speeding bullet on the highway when he can’t even wash his hair correctly?

Teenagers are walking, talking, emotional roulette wheels. You wake up and have no idea what you’re going to get. They swing so violently between joy and despair that you start to wonder if you’re raising a Broadway cast instead of a single person—except this show has no intermission, and the drama is about a missing hoodie. Cue the boy’s inner Lin-Manuel Miranda for his Hamilton-inspired rage:

Pops, I’m sixteen, nothin’s clean scene’s a mess, where’s my hoodie at?
Gray with the strings, my treasured thing, now I’m losin’ it!
Ransack the room, doom looms, and too soon Mom’s like, “Chill, relax!”
But ma, “How’m I s’posed to flex when my threads don’t match my acts?”

Every day is a new challenge. Helping them pop a zit without triggering a full-blown identity crisis born from having zero pain tolerance is no small task. That’s parenting. Coaching them through the high-stakes world of teenage romance, where asking someone to a school dance is treated like negotiating a nuclear disarmament treaty? That’s parenting. Heading to Walgreens at 9:30pm, helping your son pick out a razor because he just discovered he has three-and-a-half facial hairs, and now he’s spiraling because what if he accidentally shaves off his whole face while tending to that peach fuzz? That’s parenting. Meanwhile, I’m just standing there, wondering if it’s socially acceptable to open a bottle of Advil in the store and down a few right then and there. Nah. Not a good idea because then he’ll have to drive me home. That’s terrifying.

There are those kinda things. Then…there are the integrity lessons. The ones that sneak up on you. Like last week, when my son laughed at the way one of his teachers ran. She was rushing over to help a classmate in need but evidently looked like she had sea legs while running on dry land. Anyhow, she didn’t know it, but another teacher saw it and called him on it. And I would’ve never known had it not come up in conversation somewhat innocently, accidentally, and organically. He wasn’t alone in it—his friends laughed too. And in that moment, he had a choice: own it or disperse the blame. He chose the latter. Ugh! It’s easy to do. It’s easy to say, “Well, everyone laughed.” It’s easy to fade into the group, to let the moment pass, to pretend it wasn’t really a big deal.

But it was. How could my son, this kid I’ve raised for 16+ years, this kid with my last name—Halcomb—do such a thing? Even worse, how could he do it and not take the initiative to make it right? How come?

So we sat down. We talked about what it means to be the kind of person who does the right thing, even when it’s uncomfortable. The kind of young man who doesn’t hide behind a group. Who takes responsibility, even when no one’s forcing them to. And after our talk, he made a choice. The next day, he went back. He apologized. He made it right. I imagine it was an awkward conversation, but you know what else is awkward? Spending a whole class period trying to avoid making eye contact with a teacher who thinks you’re a jerk. Akward!

But that’s the job. As parents, we’re not just teaching them how to drive or shave or not smell like a gym sock left in a hot car. We’re teaching them how to show up. How to be a person who fixes what they break, even if it was an accident, and to do so before the sun sets. How to be the kind of person who, years from now, a friend or a spouse or a boss can trust to do what’s right, even when it’s inconvenient.

There are a thousand moments like that in parenting. They don’t always come with a perfect ending. Sometimes they argue. Sometimes they roll their eyes so hard you wonder if you should call a chiropractor. Sometimes they do the right thing, but only after a full-scale interrogation involving timestamps, location data, and possibly hiring a private investigator just to confirm what you already know. You think I’m joking. I’m not! But I have to keep telling myself, “Push through because these moments matter.” They matter because, if they don’t learn how to take responsibility over something as small as a careless laugh, how can they be trusted with the bigger things?

One day, I’ll look up and the kid I had to remind to put on deodorant will be a man shaking hands after a job interview. The kid who used to dodge hard conversations will be the one calling me, telling me about a hard conversation he had because he knew it was the right thing to do. And I’ll know, through all the chaos and noise and impossible lessons, that he was at least kinda listening.

And if I’m really lucky, he might even look back and say, “Hey dad, that one time in 10th grade when you told me to talk to my teacher and make it right, thanks for that; thanks for making me go back; I’ve never forgotten that.”

That’s when I’ll know I did alright. Until then, a thousand more moments. And, God help me, because at least a hundred of them are probably conversations about basic hygiene.