The world has changed. The demands on our children have changed. It’s time to rethink how we prepare them.
Are we preparing our children for the world we grew up in – or the world they are actually going to inherit?
When Everything Changes Except the Way We Prepare Our Children
Virtually every aspect of our lives changes. Things we once depended on become obsolete, and we adjust. Technology may be the most obvious example—we can hardly keep up with it. The way we work changes. The way we communicate changes. The way we bank, shop, learn, and access information changes. Artificial intelligence is already transforming how people work, create, solve problems, and make decisions.
We adapt because we understand that what worked yesterday may not be enough for tomorrow.
But has this realization changed how we prepare our children?
Too often, we are still relying on a parenting model built primarily around obedience: Do what I tell you. Don’t question adults. Stay out of trouble. Get good grades. Graduate. Go to college. Get a good job.
For many Black families, there are historical reasons why obedience became so deeply embedded in our parenting. There was a time when keeping a Black child quiet, compliant, respectful, and obedient to authority could literally help keep that child safe. Some of the parenting practices passed from one generation to the next were developed under circumstances where survival mattered more than self-expression, questioning authority, or independent decision-making.
But those survival strategies, developed and used to keep Black children and adults safe during slavery and Jim Crow, do not automatically prepare our children for today’s globally competitive society—a world that increasingly requires creativity, innovation, critical thinking, problem-solving, adaptability, and sometimes the courage to step outside the line rather than simply follow it.
There was a time when stepping outside the line could place a Black person in danger. Today, there are circumstances in which our children’s ability to question, think differently, challenge an idea, create something new, or recognize that the crowd is moving in the wrong direction may be exactly what allows them to thrive.
Our children are entering a world that requires much more than obedience. They must be able to evaluate information instead of simply accepting it. They need to recognize when something doesn’t make sense, solve unfamiliar problems, adapt when circumstances change, use technology rather than simply consume it, regulate their emotions, communicate effectively, exercise judgment, recognize manipulation, recover from mistakes, and make decisions without waiting for someone else to tell them what to do.
We cannot spend eighteen years demanding blind obedience and then suddenly expect independent thinking at eighteen.
Yet too often, both home and school continue to emphasize compliance while expecting independence to somehow emerge at the end.
Sit down. Be quiet. Follow directions. Do what you’re told. Complete the assignment. Pass the test.
Then eighteen arrives, and we suddenly expect these “obedient” children to be able to think for themselves.
And when they struggle, we ask, “What happened?”
Maybe we should be asking a different question:
Why did we expect independence to develop without intentionally teaching it?
That is the question I believe we have to be willing to ask ourselves.
Our parents raised us using what they knew. Their parents did the same. And generations before them learned how to raise Black children under circumstances most of us can barely imagine. They adapted because they had to. They figured out what their children needed to know to survive the world they were living in, and they taught it.
Maybe the lesson we should inherit from them isn’t simply how they parented.
Maybe the lesson is that they adapted.
So why aren’t we?
Why are we still doing things simply because “that’s how I was raised” when the world our children are entering looks nothing like the one in which we grew up?
Why are we still equating a child who does what he is told with a child who is prepared for life?
Why are we still assuming that because our children live in a good neighborhood, attend a good school, make decent grades, or have educated parents, everything will somehow work out?
And why are we waiting until something goes wrong before we start asking whether there were things we should have been teaching all along?
I know how easy that assumption is to make because I made it too.
As parents, particularly parents of Black males, we spend a great deal of time thinking about how to keep our sons safe. We have conversations other parents may never have to have. We teach them what to do if the police stop them. We tell them to watch the company they keep. Stay out of trouble. Be respectful. Don’t put yourself in situations that can change your life.
Those conversations matter.
But they are not enough.
Keeping our sons out of trouble is not the same thing as preparing them for life.
At some point, they will walk out of our homes and into situations we cannot anticipate. We won’t know everyone they meet. We won’t hear every conversation. We won’t be there when someone offers them something they shouldn’t take, when a relationship becomes unhealthy, when they lose a job, when they have money in their hands and bills to pay, when someone pressures them to follow the crowd, when they fail at something they thought they were good at, or when technology presents them with information designed to influence what they think, believe, buy, and do.
We won’t be there.
So what will they carry with them when we aren’t?
Character. Judgment. Self-control. Responsibility. Problem-solving. Perseverance.
Not because we lectured them about these things, but because we spent years intentionally developing them.
That is the difference.
And schools cannot do this work for us.
I spent decades in education. I know what good teachers can do. I also know what schools cannot do.
A teacher can teach your child mathematics. A teacher can expose your child to literature, science, history, technology, and ideas. A good teacher can encourage your child, challenge your child, and sometimes change the direction of your child’s life.
But no teacher gets the years of influence that we get.
Parents are the gatekeepers.
And somewhere along the way, I think too many of us began believing that if we sent our children to school, made sure they behaved, checked their grades, and got them across the graduation stage, we had done our job.
But graduation is not the finish line.
Adulthood is coming.
And adulthood doesn’t hand out worksheets.
There is no teacher standing at the front of the room telling them which decision is correct. There is no answer key for choosing friends, selecting a spouse, managing money, walking away from danger, controlling anger, recovering from failure, recognizing manipulation, raising children, or deciding what to do when every available choice has consequences.
That is why critical thinking matters.
That is why self-regulation matters.
That is why character matters.
That is why simply raising an obedient child has never been enough.
We cannot control everything our children will encounter. But we can be much more intentional about developing the person who will encounter it.
And that means we have to stop assuming that preparation for life’s demands will happen naturally.
It won’t.
We have to stop assuming schools will teach everything our children need.
They can’t.
And we have to stop assuming that because something worked for us—or because it was handed down to us—it should automatically be handed down to our children.
Some things should be preserved.
Some things should be strengthened.
Some things need to be healed.
And some things need to end with us.
That is what it means to Transform the Trajectory.
Not waiting until our children are struggling adults and asking:
“What happened?”
But becoming intentional while their stories are still being written and asking:
“What does this child need from me now to become the adult I am preparing them to be?”