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Reaping the Rewards of Not Giving Up

by Bob Hazleton

My younger son Jesse was the cutest little kid you could imagine. He was so cute I thought we should have taken him to do modeling or acting. He was cute, and he knew it. Jesse would hug his first grade teacher’s legs, and she let him get away with the cute act. He got away with so much in the first grade that I discovered at the start of his second grade year that Jesse couldn’t read any word over three letters long. I bought Hooked on Phonics and spent a year working on his reading.

It really hurt when Jesse started to go downhill. He got suspended in middle school for being involved in “drug talk.” We caught him and a friend with pot ready to celebrate April 20 (4-20 is the teen code for pot smoking). Jesse got caught stealing cigars from a local grocery store then got defiant when the police and the store manager questioned him. He started skipping school and stealing beer and money from us. The worst was when he wrecked the house looking for a Nintendo game system we had taken from him. My wife Sherry was so scared she called 9-1-1. Jesse heard her calling, so he slammed the phone down while screaming and cussing at her. That brought five screeching cop cars to our house.

Sherry and I tried everything we knew how to do. We took him to our counselor numerous times. He got tested for attention-deficit/ hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), but he was just fine. We tried a child psychologist; Jesse refused to go to the appointment. We had an intervention at his high school. The principle, the French teacher, the wrestling coach, Sherry, and I all showed up. Not Jesse, though!

I really wanted to blame the school, because I didn’t want to believe that I had anything to do with Jesse’s struggles and downhill slide. My older son Keith was fine. What an understatement! In high school, he got only A’s, graduated valedictorian, and didn’t do drugs or drink.

Yet there was Jesse, drinking, smoking pot, getting into trouble with the police, and stealing money from us. I questioned every belief I had about my skills as a dad. When Sherry and I made the tough decision to remove him from our house, I was crushed.

What had I done wrong? I really started to beat myself up . . . but then there was straight-A’s Keith. It helped a little when someone told me I didn’t have any more to do with Keith’s straight A’s than I did with Jesse’s problems with the police.

For a while, after Jesse went away to a program, I kept it to myself. I still thought that people would judge me. I thought that people would talk behind my back. I thought that they would think I was a bad dad.

What I came to understand is that we cannot make decisions for our children. We cannot force our kids down any particular path; all we can do is create boundaries for them. We can give them our advice and counsel. We can teach them our values. What our children do with all of this is up to them.

I learned that all the things I had taught Jesse—and all the things that he learned while he was in the program—were still there inside of him. I learned that perhaps these lessons and tools need time to percolate and stew, but what you teach your teen is never wasted—sometimes there is just a delay factor.

Jesse must have been one of those late bloomers. He eventually got his act together. He graduated from high school while in the program. His GPA was over 3.5, and he gave a commencement speech as the honor graduate.

But after eight months back home, things started to go downhill again. He enrolled at Oregon State University and informed us by voice mail, “It’s a whole new world.” Apparently that meant he could do anything he wanted and could come and go from our house as he pleased.

During his first term at Oregon State, he got a 2.7 GPA without trying, but there was constant turmoil with Sherry and me. He got busted for pot possession and for taking my car without permission. We finally kicked him out of the house and let him fend for himself.

In his second term at Oregon State, Jesse just stopped going to classes and got a 0.0 GPA. He lived with friends for a while. He got evicted from an apartment, after his so-called friends spent his share of the rent. He started couch surfing and sometimes snuck into our garage to sleep.

Jesse eventually earned his way back into our house. He bounced between fast food jobs before he got a certified nurse’s aide certificate. He worked at a nursing home for a year and then got a job at the local hospital, where he is now a unit secretary. He enrolled at a community college where he got 3.8 and 4.0 GPA’s. He transferred back to OSU after a year and a half. He graduated with a general science degree in March 2009, got married in April 2009 (I performed the ceremony), and then enrolled in a nursing program. He did this all on his own dime—he paid for his education himself! Once he found something that was important to him, he did everything in his power to make it happen. This is the power in having kids work for things, rather than giving it all to them.

The experience with Jesse also changed my life. I quit my well-paying and secure job as an engineer and started conducting personal growth seminars at specialty schools for at-risk teens. My experience with Jesse and other teens inspired me to write Dads Matter, detailing the remarkable impact of dads.

Excerpt from "Dads Matter" copyright © 2012 by Bob Hazleton.

Bob Hazleton is the author of Dads Matter: Principles, Lessons & Stories on the Remarkable Impact of Dads. Over the past ten years Bob has been involved in personal growth seminars for at-risk teens and their families. He is also a Certified Performance Coach and Experiential Facilitator, a registered professional engineer, a football referee and, of course, a dad.

Visit Bob at dadsmatter.com and bobhazleton.com.